Art collectors have dropped big bucks on famous paintings. Now they are spending more money than ever. Two artworks just sold for record amounts!
One of the works was El sueño (La cama), which means “The dream (The bed).” Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted that in 1940. It shows Kahlo sleeping in a bed with a skeleton floating above it. On November 20, 2025, someone spent $55 million to buy that dreamlike painting at the Sotheby’s house in New York City. That was the most money paid at an auction for an artwork by a female artist!
Before Kahlo’s sale, the most money for a painting by a female artist in an auction was $44.4 million. Someone spent that for Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 in 2024. El sueño (La cama) also set a record for a Latin American artist. It broke the record set by Kahlo for her 1949 painting, Diego and I. That sold for $34.9 million in 2021.
Another artwork set a record on November 18. Someone spent $236.4 million to buy Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer by Gustav Klimt. The Austrian artist had painted that life-size portrait of a woman in a white gown between 1914 and 1916. It set the record for the most expensive modern art ever sold in an auction! (The period of “modern art” goes from roughly the 1860s through the 1970s.)
Pablo Picasso had the old record for the highest price paid for a modern art painting at an auction. Someone spent $179.4 million to buy his 1955 painting, Les Femmes d’Alger (“Version O”), in 2015.
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold for nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Yet it is far from the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. That record belongs to a painting called Salvator Mundi. Leonardo da Vinci painted that more than 500 years ago. It sold for $450.3 million in 2017.
Sotheby’s has not named the buyers of either record-breaking artwork.
By Russell Kahn (Russ)
Updated November 21, 2025, 5:00 P.M. (ET)
