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2025.09.24 00:11

프리다 칼로의 '엘 수에뇨(El sueño)' 여성작가 경매사상 최고가 5천4백70만불 낙찰

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11월 20일 뉴욕 소더비 브로이어빌딩에서 열린 경매에서 프리다 칼로의 회화 '엘 수에뇨(La cama, 1940)'가 5천4백70만 달러에 낙찰됐다. 이는 여성 작가 경매사상 최고가다. <2025. 11. 15. 업데이트>

Frida Kahlo, El Sueno (La Cama), est. $40,000,000 - 60,000,000

프리다 칼로의 트라우마 담긴 자화상 '엘 수에뇨'

11월 소더비, 매디슨 브로이어 빌딩서 경매

멕시코 화가 프리다 칼로(Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954)의 자화상 '엘 수에뇨(El sueño (꿈)/ La cama(침대), 1940)'가 11월 8일 뉴욕 소더비 경매에 나온다. 예상가는 4천만-6천만 달러.

이 작품은 칼로가 개인적 트라우마와 창의적인 작법이 활발했던 1940년 그렸다. 옅은 푸른색의 하늘에 무중력으로 떠있는 침대에 누워 휴식을 취하는 자신의 모습을 묘사했다. 칼로의 몸은 생명, 성장 및 재생의 상징인 녹색 덩굴로 휘감겨 있고, 그녀의 위로는 다이나마이트로 연결된 해골이 드라이 꽃부케를 들고 있다. 칼로는 실제로 침대 덮개 위에 종이반죽으로 만든 해골을 놓아두었다고 한다. 여기서 삶과 죽음의 덩굴은 분리될 수 없다.

멕시코의 전통에서 죽음은 그림자 속으로 추방되는 것이 아니라 기념되고, 의식화되고, 친숙해진다. 칼로에게 침대는 임신, 탄생, 사랑, 질병, 죽음 등 인생의 파란만장한 드라마가 펼쳐지는 무대였다. 18세에 버스 사고에서 가까스로 살아남은 후 만성통증, 연이은 수술, 그리고 매일이 생애 마지막 날일지도 모른다는 생각에 시달리며 살았다. 칼로는 "나는 죽지 않았고, 살아야할 이유가 있다. 그 이유는 바로 그림 그리는 것이다"라고 썼다.

'Exquisite Corpus'를 타이틀로 열리는 이 경매에는 이외에도 살바도르 달리, 르네 마그리트, 막스 에른스트, 도로시아 태닝 등 80여점의 회화, 드로잉, 조각 등 초현실주의 작품으로 구성됐다. 이번 경매는 매디슨애브뉴의 구 휘트니뮤지엄 브로이어 빌딩에서 열린다.

Frida Kahlo, El Sueno (La Cama), est. $40,000,000 - 60,000,000 (1).jpg

Frida Kahlo, El Sueno (La Cama), est. $40,000,000 - 60,000,000

Once-in-a-Lifetime Collection of Surrealist Masterpieces To Star in Sotheby’s Marquee November Sales Led

by Frida Kahlo’s Poignant and Powerful Self-Portrait El sueño (La cama) Estimated $40–60 million

Further Masterworks by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning

Highlights on View from Today at Sotheby’s London Through to 23 September

Before the Full Suite of Offerings is Unveiled in New York on 8 November NEW YORK– This November, Sotheby’s will unveil Exquisite Corpus, an exceptional private collection of over 80 paintings, drawings and sculptures which capture the breadth, depth, and daring of the Surrealist imagination.

The collection is led by Frida Kahlo’s legendary self-portrait El sueño (La cama) (1940), an evocative meditation on life, death, and rebirth which is poised to set a new auction record for the artist. This SOTHEBY’S exceptional, intimate and powerful work headlines a group of landmark paintings and works on paper by other female pioneers - including Kay Sage, Remedios Varo, Valentine Hugo and Dorothea Tanning - alongside further masterpieces by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and René Magritte.

The unveiling of Exquisite Corpus follows on the heels of this week’s landmark white-glove Evening and Day sales of Pauline Karpidas’ celebrated London Collection, which together realized £100 million / $136 million — nearly double the pre-sale estimates and the highest total ever achieved for a single-owner auction in London. The historic result, driven by spirited global bidding across Surrealist masterpieces and beyond, underscores the extraordinary momentum in this field as Sotheby’s prepares to present one of the most significant Surrealist collections ever to come to market.

“Collections of this caliber and focus are encountered perhaps once in a lifetime. Exquisite Corpus is more than a remarkable assembly of individual masterpieces — it is a living body in which the narratives and imagery of different artists converge into something greater than the sum of its parts. It captures the spirit of imagination and intellectual curiosity that defined the Surrealist epoch – a collection that is, in every sense, the stuff of dreams.”

Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman, Head of Impressionist & Modern Art, Americas

“Assembled with remarkable foresight and dedication, these works bring together both the giants of Surrealism and artists working at its boldest edges, reuniting overlooked figures like Kay Sage, Valentine Hugo and Remedios Varo with Dalí, Magritte and Ernst. A vivid portrait of the moment, the collection is of a caliber and focus that rarely comes to market within a lifetime.”

Helena Newman, Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art Worldwide and Chairman Sotheby’s Europe

With its rich constellation of artists, Exquisite Corpus offers a rare opportunity to trace the full sweep of Surrealism’s restless imagination — a living body of ideas that continues to evolve, provoke and inspire. Here, Kahlo’s intimate self-portrait sits alongside Dalí’s enigmatic landscape, while Tanning’s ethereal interior contrasts with Sage’s contemplative dreamscapes. These works stand powerfully on their own yet also speak in vivid conversation, offering an encyclopaedic survey of Surrealism’s most influential figures and their circle. This unparalleled collection will be at the heart of Sotheby’s inaugural marquee auction season at the historic Breuer building in New York.

Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) (1940), a work of profound intimacy and symbolic power, was painted during a year of intense personal trauma and creative renewal. She depicts herself in repose, lying on a bed that floats weightlessly in a pale blue sky. Her body is intertwined with curling green vines – emblems of life, growth, and regeneration – while above her lies a skeleton, wired with dynamite and holding a bouquet of dried flowers. (Kahlo did in fact keep a traditional papier-mâché skeleton above the canopy of her bed.) Here, the tendrils of life and death are inseparable.

In Mexican tradition, death is not banished to the shadows – but commemorated, ritualised, and made familiar. Frida Kahlo, El Sueño, 1940, est. $40,000,000 – 60,000,000 For Kahlo, the bed was the stage upon which all of life’s dramas unfolded – conception, birth, love, illness and death. After surviving a near-fatal bus accident at the age of eighteen, Kahlo lived with chronic pain and repeated surgeries, and with the ever-present knowledge that each day could be her last. In the long months of recovery after the accident, she was confined to her bed, her family fashioning a special easel and fitting the bed’s canopy with a mirror so she could paint while lying flat.

“I am not dead and I have a reason to live. That reason is painting,” she wrote at the time. El sueño was created at a moment charged with both personal upheaval and creative urgency – the same year that her former lover Leon Trotsky was assassinated, and in the turbulent aftermath of her divorce, and eventual remarriage, to Diego Rivera. Kahlo’s surrealism is not escapist but embedded; she paints not the imagined but the intensified:

“I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” Though Kahlo famously resisted being labelled a Surrealist, her work was enthusiastically embraced by the movement’s leading figures. Just two years earlier, in 1938, the Surrealism movement’s founder André Breton had helped to organise her first exhibition in New York, writing in the catalogue that “The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb.” In 2021, Sotheby’s established the record for a work by Frida Kahlo when Diego y yo (1949) sold for $34.9 million in New York – the highest price paid at auction for a Latin American artwork.

Known more as the celebrity wife of Diego Rivera than as a groundbreaking painter in her own right during her lifetime, Kahlo has become a global icon since her death in 1954, and she now stands among the most influential and beloved artists of all time. A forthcoming major exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Tate Modern, London in 2026 will celebrate her work and impact on contemporary artists. SOTHEBY’S The painting will embark on a global tour ahead of the November sale, marking the first time it has been seen publicly in nearly three decades. Highlights will be shown in London (19–23 September), Abu Dhabi (1–2 October), Hong Kong (14–15 October) and Paris (20-24 October), before the full suite of offerings is unveiled in New York.