MEXICO CITY (AP) — frida kahlo’s “El sueño (La cama)” (in English: “The Dream (The Bed)”) is, as might be expected, controversial among art historians. $40 million to $60 million price tag When it goes up for auction later this month, it will become the most expensive work by a female or Latin American artist.
Sotheby’s auction house will exhibit the painting in London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris before selling it in New York on November 20th.
“This is a moment of much speculation,” said Helena Chavez Mac Gregor, Mexican art historian, researcher at the UNAM Institute of Aesthetics and author of “El Liston y la Bomba. The Art of Frida Kahlo.” (Ribbons and Bombs. The Art of Frida Kahlo).
In Mexico, Kahlo’s works are protected by the declaration of artistic monuments, which means that the works cannot be sold or destroyed within the country. However, works from private collections overseas whose owners are not disclosed, such as the painting in question, are legally eligible for international sale.
“The system of declaring Mexico’s modern art heritage is very abnormal,” said Mexican curator Cuauhtemoc Medina, an art historian and contemporary art expert.
judas in bed
“El sueño (La cama)” was created in 1940 after Kahlo traveled to Paris, where she came into contact with Surrealism.
Contrary to modern thinking, the skull in the canopy of the bed day of the dead Although it is a skeleton, Judas is a handmade cardboard figure. Traditionally lit with gunpowder during Easter, the statue symbolizes purification and the victory of good over evil, and represents Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.
In the painting, the skeleton is detailed with firecrackers, flowers on its ribs, and a grimacing smile, details inspired by the actual cardboard skeleton Kahlo kept in the canopy of her bed.
Kahlo “spent much of her time in bed awaiting death,” Chavez-McGregor said. “She has lived a very complicated life because she has lived with all sorts of illnesses and physical problems.”
frida and surrealism
Kahlo’s paintings are being auctioned alongside works by Surrealists such as: salvador daliRené Magritte, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, she did not consider herself a member of the movement, even though she had met its founder, André Breton, in Mexico and held an exhibition under his auspices in Paris in 1939.
“The Bretons were fascinated by Frida’s work, because they saw in it the spirit of surrealism,” said Chavez Mac Gregor.
An ardent communist, Kahlo considered Surrealism (a movement advocating a revolution of consciousness) to be bourgeois. As Chavez Mac Gregor pointed out, “Frida always maintained a decisive distance from it.”
Nevertheless, experts have found in Kahlo’s works elements of surrealism associated with dreaminess, an inner world, revolutionary and sexual freedom. This concept is seen in the bed suspended in the sky with Kahlo sleeping in the vines.
“Purchased at an exorbitant price”
“El sueño (La cama)” was last exhibited in the 1990s and may disappear from public view again after the auction, a fate shared by many paintings acquired at high prices at auction.
There are exceptions such as “Diego” ( “Diego and I”) This set the highest sales price in history when Kahlo was sold in 2021 for $34.9 million.
A painting depicting an artist and her husband muralist Diego Riverawas purchased by Argentinian businessman Eduardo Costantini and later lent to the Latin American Museum (Malva) in Buenos Aires, where it remains on display.
Medina, an art historian, regretted that the purchase at an “exorbitant price” reduced the art to mere economic value.
He lamented that when funds buy art simply as an investment (such as when buying stock in a public company), the works are often relegated to tax-free zones to avoid costs. Their fate “could be much worse. They could end up in a refrigerator at Frankfurt Airport for decades to come,” he said.
female artist
The current record for a work by a female artist is held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014.
However, in the auction market, no female artist has yet surpassed the highest selling price for a male artist, reflecting a deep disparity. The current benchmark is “Salvator Mundi,” attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was auctioned by Christie’s. $450.3 million in 2017.
