A 1940 self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, El sueño (La cama) (The Dream/The Bed), has sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $54.7 million, setting a new auction record. The painting exceeded its estimate of $40–60m and surpassed the previous record, held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4m in 2014.

The painting shows Kahlo asleep beneath a canopy holding a grinning skeleton wrapped in dynamite, an expression of her fear of dying in her sleep, connected to lifelong pain and trauma stemming from a catastrophic bus accident at age 18.

El sueño (La cama) is one of the few Kahlo works still in private hands outside Mexico, where most of her art is legally considered national patrimony and cannot be sold internationally. The painting was last publicly exhibited in the late 1990s and has been requested for upcoming shows in New York, London and Brussels.

The sale also breaks the previous record for Latin American art, which Kahlo herself set in 2021 with Diego y Yo for $34.9m.

This auction occurred during a huge week in the New York art market: Sotheby’s moved $706m of modern art, including a Klimt selling for $236.4m, the second-highest auction price ever.

Image: El sueño (La cama) by Frida Kahlo, which has sold for $54.7m at auction in New York. Photograph: Courtesy Sotheby’s