New York: A rare 1940 self-portrait by Frida Kahlo has become the most expensive artwork by a female artist ever sold at auction, fetching $54.7 million (over ₹48 million) at Sotheby’s here on Thursday.

‘El sueño (La cama)’, alternatively titled ‘The Dream (The Bed)’ in English, depicts the Mexican painter asleep in a floating colonial-style bed, draped in gold and entwined with vines, while a skeleton wrapped in dynamite hovers above. The haunting work surpassed the previous auction record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

The sale also broke Kahlo’s own auction record for a Latin American artist. Her 1949 work ‘Diego and I’ sold for $34.9 million in 2021. Some of Kahlo’s paintings are believed to have changed hands privatel

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