What is the most expensive painting by a female artist? What we know as Frida Kahlo self-portrait sale broke records

A 1940 self-portrait by renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo titled "El sueño (La cama)" – "The Dream (The Bed)" has sold for $54.7 million, more than 1,000 times what it sold for in 1980. This sale makes Frida Kahlo's self-portrait the most valuable painting by a female artist sold at an auction.

The portrait sold at Sotheby's in New York on Thursday evening surpassed the previous female-artist auction record held by Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which was sold in 2014 for $44.4 million.

A self-portrait by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million in New York on yesterday, setting a new record for the price of a painting by a womanhttps://t.co/z0sdwBTe4L

— TheJournal.ie (@thejournal_ie) November 21, 2025

It also succeeded Kahlo's own previous auction record. The 1949 painting, "Diego y yo" (Diego and I), featuring Frida and her husband, Diego Rivera, was sold for $34.9 million in 2021. At the time, it became the second most expensive artwork by a female artist.

More about "El sueño (La cama)" – "The Dream (The Bed)" by Frida Kahlo

"El sueño (La cama)" – "The Dream (The Bed)," placed in auction by an anonymous person who himself acquired the piece at a 1980 New York auction, depicts Kahlo lying on a wooden bed under a vine-covered golden blanket. Above her, a floating bed holds a life-sized skeleton, wired with explosives, and holding a bouquet, positioned just like her.

According to CNN, a bed often appears in Frida's art, as she was bedridden for a long time due to a near-fatal bus accident in her teens and suffered lifelong chronic pain throughout her life.

According to Google Arts & Culture, Frida was involved in a bus accident on September 17, 1925, when the bus she was in with her boyfriend, Gomez Arias, crashed into a trolley. As a result, the artist was left with a "broken spinal column, collar bone, ribs, pelvis,11 fractures in her leg and an iron hand rail punctured her abdomen and uterus."

To help her continue panting, after the incident, her family set up an adapted easel at her bedside and attached a mirror to the canopy of her bed.

"I am not dead and I have a reason to live. That reason is painting," Frida wrote at the time.

When Kahlo painted "El sueño (La cama)" – "The Dream (The Bed)" in 1940, she remarried Diego Rivera, a year after their divorce in 1939. The same year, her former lover, Leon Trotsky, was assassinated in Mexico.

Praising Frida's “El sueño (La cama)" in an email to CNN, Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s head of Latin American art, said:

"Frida Kahlo occupies a completely singular place in art history. There’s an almost spiritual connection people have with her paintings, which are so deeply personal yet at the same time resonate universally. We’ve seen it this season while El sueño (La cama) has been on display around the world, with lines out the door.”

She continued:

"This painting has all the hallmarks of a signature Frida: the self-portrait, a surrealist imagery, and most importantly, a psychological intensity and that sense of communion between artist and viewer."

Born on July 6, 1907, Frida Kahlo's life was adapted into a 2002 film, starring Salma Hayek.