SA's Marlene Dumas shatters living woman artist record with R230 million painting sale

News24

15-05-2025

A painting by South African artist Marlene Dumas sold for $13.6 million in New York on Wednesday.
Dumas has set a record for the most expensive artwork by a living woman artist sold at an auction.
Her painting, Miss January (1997), depicts a semi-nude woman posing upright and gazing back at the viewer.
South African painter Marlene Dumas has set the record for the most expensive work by a living woman artist sold at an auction.
This comes after an anonymous bidder bought her painting, Miss January (1997), for $13.6 million (roughly R230 million), including fees, during a Christie's auction in New York on Wednesday evening.
The bidding opened at $9 million and closed at $11.5 million before fees, according to ARTnews.
The painting was projected to sell between $12 million and $18 million, according to The Art Newspaper.
Miss January was a consignment from the Rubell Family, who are one of the world's top art collectors, according to ARTnews.
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Before Wednesday's auction, the record was held by Jenny Saville, whose self-portrait Propped (1992) sold for $12.4 million in 2018 at Sotheby's London.
Dumas had previously held an auction record when her painting The Visitor (1995) sold for $6.33 million at Sotheby's London in 2008.
The other big sale at the Christie's auction was Jean-Michel Basquiat's Baby Boom (1982), which sold for $23.4 million with fees.
Miss January is a colourful portrait depicting a semi-nude woman standing upright, gazing back at the viewer.
Dumas has written about the theme of beauty in her art, explored in works like The Miss World competition from 1983.
'When I was young, all the Miss Worlds looked alike. No Chinese or black Ghanese or Japanese ever won. It was always a white American type that was found the fairest,' she wrote in 1996.
'In relation to artworks, everyone thinks and accepts that many different points of view can and even should justifiably exist next to each other.'
'And yet we still end up asking the question, 'Who is the best or the most beautiful; or what painting of the future will look like?' No one wants to believe that in principle nothing 'has to' but everything 'could'.'
Dumas was born in Cape Town in 1953, growing up in Kuils River. She is currently based in the Netherlands and has had high-profile art sales around the world, like in Paris and Hong Kong.