A self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is expected to break records when it goes up for auction in New York this week.

The surrealist painting, being sold on November 20 by a private collector, is generating a frenzy of excitement, with experts predicting it could become the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold. That record is currently held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1932 painting “Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1,” which fetched $44.4 million in 2014.

Auctioneers at Sotheby’s have valued “El sueño (La cama)” — “The Dream (The Bed)” — at between $40 and $60 million. Kahlo, who died in 1954, already holds the second-highest auction record for a female artist. “Diego y yo” (“Diego and I”), a self-portrait from 1949, featuring her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, fetched $34.

See Full Page