Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) - The Dream (The Bed) - is causing a stir as its estimated $US40 million to $US60 million price tag would make it the most expensive work by any female or Latin American artist when it goes to auction this month.
Sotheby’s auction house will put the painting up for sale on November 20 in New York after exhibiting it in London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris.
“This is a moment of a lot of speculation,” said Mexican art historian Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, a researcher at UNAM’s Institute of Aesthetic Research and author of El listón y la bomba. El arte de Frida Kahlo (The ribbon and the bomb. The art of Frida Kahlo).
In Mexico, Kahlo’s work is protected by a declaration of artistic monument, meaning pieces within the country cannot be sold or destroyed.
However, works from private collections abroad - like the painting in question, whose owner remains unrevealed - are legally eligible for international sale.
El sueño (La cama) was created in 1940 following Kahlo's trip to Paris, where she came into contact with the surrealists.
Contrary to contemporary belief, the skull on the bed’s canopy is not a Day of the Dead skeleton, but a Judas - a handmade cardboard figure.
In the painting, the skeleton is detailed with firecrackers, flowers on its ribs and a smiling grimace - a detail inspired by a cardboard skeleton Kahlo actually kept in the canopy of her bed.
Kahlo “spent a lot of time in bed waiting for death,” said Chávez Mac Gregor. “She had a very complex life because of all the illnesses and physical challenges with which she lived.”
El sueño (La cama) was last exhibited in the 1990s, and after the auction, it could disappear from public view once again, a fate shared by many paintings acquired for large sums at auction.
The current sale record for a work by a female artist is held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1, which sold for $US44.4 million in 2014.
However, the auction market still reflects a profound disparity as no female artist has yet exceeded the maximum sale price of a male artist.
