Overview

• The 1940 painting depicts Kahlo asleep beneath a canopy topped by a skeleton wired with dynamite and holding flowers, an image often read as a meditation on mortality.
• The work is on view in London before traveling to Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris, then goes on public display in New York beginning Nov. 8.
• The painting leads a Sotheby’s sale devoted to Surrealism that also includes works by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy.
• The estimate puts the lot within range to surpass Kahlo’s $34.9 million auction record and Georgia O’Keeffe’s $44.4 million high for a woman artist, if bidding meets expectations.
• Sotheby’s executive Julian Dawes calls the painting one of Kahlo’s most important and unusually scarce outside Mexico, underscoring its rarity on the market.