A surreal self-portrait by iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has sold for $54.7 million, smashing the auction record for any work by a female artist.

The 1940 painting, El sueno (La cama) — or 'The Dream (The Bed)' — fetched more than 1,000 times its original hammer price from 1980, after an intense bidding battle between two collectors at Sotheby's in New York.

The haunting work depicts Kahlo asleep in a floating wooden canopy bed, her figure draped beneath a skeleton entwined with dynamite, a stark emblem of mortality and personal turmoil.

Painted during a turbulent period marked by the assassination of a former lover and the aftermath of her divorce and remarriage, the piece is considered one of Kahlo's most psychologically charged self-portraits.

Kahlo, who died in 1954, is widely

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