A 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has sold for $54.7m (£41.8m, A$84.7m) at a New York art auction, setting a new top sale price for a work by any female artist.

El sueño (La cama), or The Dream (The Bed), which depicts Kahlo asleep in a bed with a smiling skeleton wrapped in dynamite on the canopy above her, sold on Thursday night at a Sotheby’s auction of surrealist art after four minutes of bidding. The Frida Kahlo scandal: Fridamania could reach new heights today – but where are her ‘missing’ masterpieces? Read more

The price tag, which includes fees, surpasses the record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold at Sotheby’s for $44.4m in 2014 .

Sotheby’s has yet to identify the successful buyer of the painting.

El sueño (L

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