Art lovers have a date marked with all possible colors on the calendar for next November. A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, El Sueño (La Cama), will be auctioned in New York and is expected to be one of the artist’s most expensive works. With estimates between $40 and $60 million, it would surpass Georgia O’Keeffe, and finally recognize the value of a woman’s art. It is a work from 1940, painted during a turbulent time in Frida’s life following her divorce from Diego Rivera and the assassination of a former lover, Leon Trotsky.
In it, she depicts herself sleeping in a bed, and above her, death is represented as a skeleton decorated with dynamite and flowers. Although Kahlo never identified it as a surrealist painting, it will be auctioned as part of a private collection of surrealist art, including works by other artists such as René Magritte.
El sueño (La Cama)
Painted in 1940, this work is not just another piece in Frida’s collection. According to experts, it is not a self-portrait, but a dissection. The painting shows Kahlo asleep on a four-poster bed, surrounded by green plants, with a serene expression on her face. Above her, as if on a bunk bed, a skeleton wrapped in flowers and dynamite seems to guard her sleep. It is a representation of death, which unfortunately haunted the artist from a very young age. The work is characterized by its symbolic intensity and the depiction of her relationship with death.
Painting through the pain
The moment when this painting was created was especially turbulent for Kahlo. She had just divorced the man who would become her husband for a second time, Diego Rivera, and her former lover Leon Trotsky had been assassinated. With her health increasingly fragile, the artist was able to combine tenderness and tension in a single image, making the presence of death in her life visible, along with her calmness regarding it.
Where´s this painting?
Far from being the property of the authorities responsible for the repatriation of Latin American art, this work belongs to a private collection that is not even located in Mexico. Perhaps that is why it is such a coveted object among other art lovers (the fascination with what we cannot have), but for Mexico’s cultural authorities, it is a work that must be secured as the artistic heritage of a key figure of the twentieth century.
A new rank for a woman’s art
November will be the month and New York the city that will host the auction of this artwork. Frida never described her work as surrealist, as she maintained that she portrayed her reality and not her dreams, but that has not prevented it from being associated with surrealism. In fact, the painting will be auctioned alongside works by other names such as René Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Max Ernst, as part of a surrealist art collection. Estimates of its price range between $40 and $60 million, although it is believed that the exact figure will be $44.4 million. If so, Frida Kahlo would become the first woman to sell a painting for such an expensive amount in history.
She reached $34.9 million with her work Diego and I in 2021, but this could even double that value. The importance of this new “ranking” does not lie in the price per se. It is something deeper. A recognition of the art of a woman who painted in a world of men (and who was much better than many of them). A claim that places Frida Kahlo where she deserves, having become a globally recognized icon, and with a body of work that leaves no one indifferent.