Frida Kahlo’s painting El sueño (La cama), also known as The Dream (The Bed), was showcased at Sotheby’s auction house in London on September 19, 2025. AP Photo
Frida Kahlo’s celebrated painting El sueño (La cama) — The Dream (The Bed) — is expected to make history this month. With an estimated value between US$40 million and US$60 million, it could become the most expensive artwork ever sold by a female or Latin American artist.
The painting will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York on November 20, after travelling through London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Paris for public viewings.
“This is a moment of a lot of speculation,” said Mexican art historian Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, a leading researcher and author on Kahlo’s work.
Why the Painting Matters
In Mexico, Kahlo’s art holds special cultural protection and cannot be sold or exported. But The Dream (The Bed) belongs to a private international collection, which makes its sale possible.
“The system of declaring Mexican modern artistic heritage is very anomalous,” explained Mexican curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, referring to the complex legal framework surrounding such works.
The painting, created in 1940 after Kahlo’s visit to Paris, reveals much about her imagination and struggles. At first glance, the skeleton on the bed canopy seems like a Day of the Dead figure. However, experts confirm it represents Judas, a traditional effigy burned during Easter to symbolize purification and the triumph of good over evil.
The skeletal figure, decorated with firecrackers and flowers, is believed to reflect a real papier-mâché skeleton Kahlo kept over 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.”
Frida and the Surrealist World
Though her paintings often appear dreamlike, Kahlo rejected the label of surrealist. She met surrealism’s founder André Breton in Mexico and exhibited her work in Paris under his guidance. But she dismissed the movement’s ideals, calling them bourgeois.
“Breton was fascinated by Frida’s work, because he saw that surrealist spirit there,” Chávez Mac Gregor explained. “But Frida always kept a critical distance from that.”
Even so, her art shares surrealist traits — vivid imagery, dreamlike settings, and deep emotional symbolism. In The Dream (The Bed), a sleeping Kahlo floats among vines, merging life, death, and fantasy in one frame.
Record-Breaking Potential
The painting was last seen publicly in the 1990s. After this auction, it could vanish again into a private collection. Experts compare it to Kahlo’s Diego y yo (Diego and I), which sold for US$34.9 million in 2021. That painting, owned by Argentine collector Eduardo Costantini, now hangs in the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires.
However, Medina expressed concern about record-breaking art prices. “These crazy-priced purchases reduce art to economic value,” he said, warning that many masterpieces end up locked in warehouses, hidden from the public.
Currently, the highest auction price for a female artist’s work belongs to Georgia O’Keeffe, whose Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for US$44.4 million in 2014. Kahlo’s The Dream (The Bed) could soon surpass that record — though still far below the all-time high of US$450.3 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
