Overview

• Sotheby’s will offer the 1940 self-portrait in New York on November 8 within its Exquisite Corpus private-collection sale of more than 80 Surrealist works.
• The $40–$60 million estimate positions the painting to surpass Kahlo’s $34.9 million record from 2021 and the $44.4 million auction record for a woman artist.
• After nearly three decades largely out of public view, the work will be exhibited in London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Paris before the sale.
• Sotheby’s specialists underscore its rarity as one of the few major Kahlo paintings outside Mexico that is not in a museum collection.
• The consignor has not been named; The Art Newspaper has linked the collection to Nesuhi and Selma Ertegun, a connection that remains unconfirmed.