The 10 most expensive artworks by women
In November 2025, when Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) (1940; The Dream [The Bed]) went to auction the same week Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16) also went under the hammer, it illustrated the need for a list focusing on art by women at auction. El sueño (La cama) fetched $54.7 million with fees, making it the highest paid for an artwork by a woman at auction (prices have not been adjusted for inflation). The sum was significant, but it was overshadowed by the amount paid earlier in the week for Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer: $236.4 million with fees. Elisabeth Lederer is only the second-most expensive artwork sold at auction; Salvator Mundi (c. 1500), an oil-on-panel painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, is the most costly. It sold in 2017 for $450.3 million with fees. As the lavish numbers show, the prices paid for art by women at auction are nowhere near those for work by men. Women need their own list or they would not be represented at all. Find out what other art tops the roster.
Frida Kahlo, El sueño (La cama) (1940): $54.7 million
The sale at Sotheby’s in New York City in 2025 of Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) (1940; The Dream [The Bed]) was a highly anticipated event, and it did not disappoint. The painting secured $54.7 million with fees, making the amount the highest paid for an artwork by a woman at auction.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932): $44.4 million
In 2014 Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed was acquired by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, which paid $44.4 million with fees at Sotheby’s in New York City. At the time it was the most expensive artwork by a woman sold at auction, and it held the record for more than 11 years.
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Frida Kahlo, Diego y yo (1949): $34.9 million
Hyped by Sotheby’s as Frida Kahlo’s final bust self-portrait, Diego y yo (1949) was purchased for $34.9 million with fees in 2021 at the auction house in New York City. The sale marked the first time Kahlo became one of the most expensive women artists at auction and it also made her the most expensive Latin American artist. The portrait annihilated the previous record, which had been set by a painting by Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera, when The Rivals was purchased at Christie’s in New York City for $9.8 million with fees in 2018.
Louise Bourgeois, cast one of an edition of six of Spider (1996): $32.8 million
Louise Bourgeois’s monumental arachnids have fetched the highest prices at auction for sculptures made by a woman. Three casts from an edition of six of Spider (1996) dominate this list. The leading auction sale was from 2023, when the first cast of Spider was bought at Sotheby’s in New York City for $32.8 million with fees. An even larger sum had been achieved the previous year, when a different Spider sculpture from 1996 was reported to have gone for $40 million during the Art Basel art fair in Switzerland in a private sale, not at auction.
Louise Bourgeois, cast two of six of Spider (1996): $32 million
The price for the second cast of an edition of six of Bourgeois’s Spider (1996) closely follows the first. In 2019 the sculpture went for what was then a record-breaking $32 million with fees at Christie’s in New York City.
Joan Mitchell, Untitled (c. 1959): $29.2 million
In November 2023 two paintings by Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell went under the hammer in New York City, and the first, Untitled (c. 1959), a lushly colored canvas of gestural strokes, broke the artist’s auction record when it was bought at Christie’s for $29.2 million with fees.
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Leonora Carrington, Les distractions de Dagobert (1945): $28.5 million
In 2024 Leonora Carrington’s Les distractions de Dagobert, a Surrealist tableau depicting the 7th-century Merovingian king, was acquired by Eduardo F. Costantini for $28.5 million from Sotheby’s in New York City. The founder of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires was determined to procure the artist’s masterpiece after having been outbid for the painting when it went for $475,500 (about $990,000 today) at the same auction house in 1995.
Louise Bourgeois, cast three of six of Spider (1996): $28.2 million
Part of the same edition as the other two sculptures in this inventory, the third of six casts of Bourgeois’s Spider (1996) fetched $28.2 million plus fees at Christie’s in New York City in 2015.
Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers (1990–91): $27.9 million
The second of Mitchell’s paintings to go to auction in November 2023 was a late work. Sunflowers (1990–91) sold at Sotheby’s in New York City for the impressive amount of $27.9 million, days after her painting Untitled (c. 1959) had sold downtown at Christie’s in New York City for the record-breaking $29.2 million.
Georgia O’Keeffe, White Rose with Larkspur No. I (1927): $26.7 million
O’Keeffe’s florals consistently do well at auction, and White Rose with Larkspur No. I (1927) was no exception. It brought in $26.7 million with fees at Christie’s in New York City in 2022.