Frida Kahlo's self-portrait "El Sueno" ("The Dream") set a new record at Sotheby's on Thursday, becoming the most expensive work by a female artist ever auctioned.

The 1940 painting, showing Kahlo asleep in a bed floating among clouds, sold for $54.7 million (€47 million), surpassing the $44.4 million paid at Sotheby's in 2014 for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1."

The piece was one of the few Kahlo works still in private hands outside Mexico, where her art is protected as a national treasure. 

This painting, held in an undisclosed private collection, was legally eligible for international sale.

The buyer's name was not disclosed.

Prices for Frida Kahlo's works have risen steadily

"El Sueno" was painted during a turning point in Kahlo's life, shaped by health problems from an earlier illness and accident and the upheaval of her divorce and remarriage to Diego Rivera in 1940.

She contracted polio at the age of six and was injured so severely in a streetcar accident at 18 that she had to wear steel and leather corsets for the rest of her life.

Confined to bed after the accident, Frida Kahlo began painting to pass the time. 

It was the beginning of an unprecedented career that made her Mexico's most famous artist.

"I never painted dreams," she once said. "I painted my own reality."

Thursday's sale also topped Kahlo's own auction record for a work by a Latin American artist.

A painting depicting Kahlo and her husband sold in 2021 for $34.9 million, the previous highest price paid for her work, although her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains the "Salvator Mundi," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $450 million in 2017. 

Edited by: Sean Sinco