Overview
- The work hammered at $47 million and totaled about $54.7 million with fees, with Sotheby’s Anna Di Stasi executing the winning phone bid.
- The price eclipsed Georgia O’Keeffe’s $44.4 million benchmark and surpassed Kahlo’s prior $34.9 million high, also marking a new record for Latin American art at auction.
- Consigned from the Selma and Nesuhi Ertegun estate, the painting last sold at Sotheby’s in 1980 for $51,000 and toured London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Paris and New York before the sale.
- Sotheby’s presented the canvas as the centerpiece of its Exquisite Corpus Surrealism auction, which brought in $98.1 million and delivered additional records, including for Dorothea Tanning.
- The buyer remains undisclosed, and major museums have requested loans for upcoming exhibitions as scholars caution the work could again be out of public view.