Artist's self-portrait set to break records with estimated R690-million sale
The rarely viewed artwork will be sold at auction in November.
Frida Kahlo is an iconic painter well-known for her uncompromising and colourful self-portraits.
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The Mexican artist depicted themes of the human body, identity and death in her work as she struggled with health issues throughout her life.
Although she always denied her connection to the Surrealist art movement, her work is often classified as such.
Kahlo died at the age of 47 but was revered during her lifetime.
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One year before she died in 1954, she managed to attend her first solo exhibition lying on a bed.
Her work has featured in many auctions over the years, with the highest price for a sold Kahlo work being $34,9-million (R603-million). The piece depicted her and her husband, Diego Rivera, and was called 'Diego and I'.
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According to ABC News, most of her paintings have sold privately for even more.
Now, a lesser-seen Kahlo self-portrait is going up for auction at Sotheby's, and it is predicted to be a record-setting sale.
The artwork, which was painted in 1940, is called 'El sueño (La cama)' — 'The Dream (The Bed)'.
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It shows the artist wreathed in vines and lying in a four-poster bed, floating in a pale blue sky. On top of the bed lies a skeleton wired with dynamite and holding a bouquet of flowers.
This painting is estimated to be worth between $40-million (R690-million) and $60-million (R1-billion) and may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist.
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The record is currently held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” which sold for $44,4 million in 2014.
It's not just one of the more important works by Kahlo, but one of a few that exists outside of Mexico and not in a museum collection. So as both a work of art and as an opportunity in the market, it could not be more rare and special.
El sueño (La cama) was last publicly exhibited in the late 1990s and was part of a private collection.
Her greatest works derive from this moment between the late 1930s and the early 1940s. She has had a variety of tribulations in her romantic life with Diego, in her own life with her health, but at the same time she’s really at the height of her powers.
The Kahlo painting is currently touring from Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris before it goes on sale in New York.
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Image: Sotheby's/ARTNews