SA-born artist Marlene Dumas breaks record with R246m sale

A 1997 art piece painted by South African-born artist Marlene Dumas has sold for more than R230m at Christie’s New York, setting a new benchmark for female artists in the 21st century art market.

Dumas' provocative 2.74m-tall oil painting Miss January sold for a staggering $13.635m (R246.7m) on Wednesday, setting a new world record for a living female artist.

The monumental portrait, a striking image of a blonde woman nude from the waist down, captivated collectors during the 21st Century Evening Sale held via Instagram Live and YouTube.

Auctioneer Yü-Ge Wang, associate director and senior client adviser at Christie’s, led the sale which saw fierce bidding and ultimately achieved a total of $96.5m (R1.75bn). An impressive 92% of lots were sold by number and 97% by value, with four artists breaking auction records: Louis Fratino, Simone Leigh, Emma McIntyre and Dumas.

Dumas’ record surpasses the previous benchmark held by British painter Jenny Saville, whose work Propped (1992) sold for £9.5m (R228m) at Sotheby’s London in 2018.

Despite this groundbreaking achievement, Dumas’ sale still trails the record for a living male artist Jeff Koons’ Rabbit (1986), which sold for $91.07m (R1.65bn) in 2019.

Christie’s reflected on Dumas’ evolution as an artist, stating: “Dumas started exploring and scrutinising the female form at age 10, with a drawing called Miss World’ which depicted idolised glamour models. More than 30 years later, she returned to the subject with Miss January, a portrait that threads the line between revealing and concealing, and serves as perhaps the best example of her influential female portraiture.”

Born in Cape Town in 1953, Dumas is based in the Netherlands, where she represented the country at the 1995 Venice Biennale and was later featured in the central pavilion in 2015.

The online art marketplace Artsy describes her oil and watercolour paintings as deeply political and emotionally charged. 

“She’s often inspired by her experiences growing up in apartheid-era South Africa. Dumas has based compositions on photographs of friends and family, mass-media imagery of current events and celebrities, and art historical references. Her ghostly palette comprises mostly greys, browns, blues and pinks, and her style features blurred brushstrokes and thin washes of colour,” says Artsy.

“Nude bodies are a frequent motif — sometimes they’re engaged in amorous acts that highlight the figures’ expression, contact and emotion.”

Her works are held in prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, MoMA and the Stedelijk Museum.

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