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Frida Kahlo’s “The Dream (The Bed)” – in English“The Dream (The Bed)” – is causing a stir among art historians because its estimated $40 million to $60 million price tag would make it the most expensive work by any woman or woman. latin american When the artist goes to auction later this month.
Sotheby’s auction house will put the painting up for sale in New York on November 20 after exhibiting it in London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and China. Paris,
“This is a moment of a lot of speculation,” he said Mexican Art historian Helena Chávez Mac Gregor is a researcher at UNAM’s Institute of Aesthetic Research and author of “The Ribbon and the Bomb.” Frida Kahlo(Ribbons and bombs. The art of Frida Kahlo).
In Mexico, Kahlo’s work is protected by the declaration of artistic monument, meaning the pieces cannot be sold or destroyed within the country. However, works from private collections abroad – such as the painting in question, whose owner has not been disclosed – are legally eligible for international sales.
“The Mexican system of declaring modern artistic heritage is very inconsistent,” said Mexican curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, an art historian and expert on contemporary art.
Judas on the bed
“El Sueño (La Cama)” was created following Kahlo’s visit to Paris in 1940, where she came into contact with the Surrealists.
Contrary to contemporary belief, the skull on the bed canopy is not the skeleton from Day of the Dead, but the skeleton of Judas – a handmade cardboard figure. Traditionally burned with gunpowder during Easter, this effigy symbolizes purification and the victory of good over evil, representing Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus.
In the painting, the skeleton is detailed with firecrackers, flowers on its ribs, and a beaming smile – a detail inspired by a cardboard skeleton Kahlo actually kept in the canopy of her bed.
Chávez MacGregor said, Kahlo “spent a lot of time in bed waiting to die.” “His life was very complicated because of all the illnesses and physical challenges he had.”
Frida and surrealism
Although Kahlo’s paintings are being auctioned alongside the works of Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, she did not consider herself a member of the movement, despite meeting its founder André Breton in Mexico and an exhibition organized by him in Paris in 1939.
Chávez MacGregor said, “Breton was fascinated by Frida’s work, because he saw the surrealist spirit there.”
Kahlo, a committed communist, considered Surrealism – a movement proposing a revolution of consciousness – to be bourgeois. As Chávez MacGregor said, “Frida always had a critical distance from him.”
Despite this, experts have found elements of surrealism in Kahlo’s work that relate to a dream-like, inner world and a revolutionary and sexual freedom – a concept reflected in the bed hanging in the sky and Kahlo sleeping among a vine.
‘Purchasing at strange prices’
“El Sueño (La Cama)” was last exhibited in the 1990s, and after the auction, it may once again disappear from public view, the same fate that befalls many paintings acquired for large sums at auction.
There are a few exceptions, including “Diego y Yo” (“Diego and I”), which set a record sale price for Kahlo when it sold for $34.9 million in 2021.
The painting depicting the artist and her husband muralist Diego Rivera was acquired by Argentinian business owner Eduardo Costantini and then loaned to the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), where it remains on display.
Medina, the art historian, regretted that “extremely expensive” purchases had reduced art to only economic value.
He lamented that when funds buy art merely as an investment – like buying shares in a public company – the works are often moved to tax-free zones to avoid the cost. Their fate, he said, “could be even worse; they could remain in a refrigerator at Frankfurt Airport for decades to come.”
a female artist
The current sales record for a work by a female artist is held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1”, which fetched $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014.
However, there is still deep inequality in the auction market as no female artist has yet surpassed the maximum selling price of a male artist. The current benchmark is “Salvator Mundi,” attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was auctioned by Christie’s in 2017 for $450.3 million.