The Frida Kahlo self-portrait “El sueño (La cama)” shattered the auction record for a work by a female artist, selling for $55 million at Sotheby’s Thursday.
The sale “shows just how far we have come, not only in our appreciation of Frida Kahlo’s genius, but in the recognition of women artists at the very highest level of the market,” Anna Di Stasi, head of Latin American art for Sotheby’s, said in a news release. Kahlo’s haunting 1940 painting had previously sold at Sotheby’s 45 years ago for just $51,000, according to the auction house.
