Frida Kahlo's painting *El sueño (La cama)* (1940) sold at Sotheby's for $54.7 million, setting a new auction record for Latin American art, for the artist herself, and for any work by a female artist. The sale surpasses Kahlo's previous record of $34.9 million set in 2021 for *Diego y yo* and eclipses the $9.76 million record for her husband Diego Rivera's *The Rivals* from 2018.
The record-breaking price underscores the surging market demand for Kahlo's work and reflects a broader correction in the art market, with Sotheby's reportedly doubling its year-over-year earnings in this week's sales. Kahlo's deeply personal and often harrowing self-portraits, which explore themes of physical pain, marital strife, and identity, have cemented her status as a major figure in Surrealism and a cultural icon, with the auction confirming her own prescient 1933 declaration: "it is I who am the big artist."