A 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo of her asleep in a bed could make history Thursday when it goes on sale by Sotheby’s in New York.

With an estimated price of $40 million to $60 million, “El sueño (La cama)” – in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist when it goes under the hammer. That record currently stands at $44.4 million, paid at Sotheby’s in 2014 for Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1.”

The highest price at auction for a Kahlo work is $34.9 million, paid in 2021 for “Diego and I,” depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera . Her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.

The self-portrait is among the few Kahlo pieces that remain in private hands outsi

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