From PBS NewsHour.

A Frida Kahlo painting sold for $54.7 million on Thursday, becoming the most expensive artwork by a woman to go at auction.

The painting, called "El sueño (La cama)," or "The dream (The bed)" in English, is a self portrait by Kahlo. In it, she lays covered in vines on a canopy bed, with a skeleton holding flowers and wrapped in dynamite above her. Kahlo often painted pieces depicting moments of her life. After a bus accident at 18 left her confined to her bed, she often played with the ideas of life and mortality, evident in this work.

The sale broke the previous auction record set by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.
The auction came as a surprise; in 1984, Mexico banned the export of her art from the country without special permission. According to Sotheby’s, “El sueño (la cama)” was held in a private collection outside of Mexico for 45 years.

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