Marlene Dumas Shatters Art Auction Record

Photo Credit: London Drawing Group

South African artist Marlene Dumas made history this week after her painting shattered a world auction record for a living female artist!

New York, USA (16 May 2025) — Jenny Saville’s record for the highest auction sale for a living female artist’s work was shattered this week in New York. A painting by South African artist Marlene Dumas knocked the previous record off its feet when the bids rose and rose and eventually sold for a cool $13.6 million (nearly R250 million).

As such, history has been made by Marlene and ‘Miss January’, the artist’s 1997 painting, which is now the visual for the new world record.

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Marlene’s journey to such a monumental feat has been a long, winding and rich unfolding. The artist forayed into the art world by studying Fine Arts in Cape Town before heading to the Netherlands to attend Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem. In the 70s, Marlene began showcasing her work but was barely noticed at the time.

During the decades in between that time in which attention seemed so far away and now (where all eyes were on her work), Marlene built her skills as a painter, her knowledge in psychology, her reputation and her exhibition chops to become an award-winning artist who has showcased her work all over the world and in some of the most prestigious places.

However, the record she’s set extends far beyond herself. Cutting through the politics and economy of the art world, the news alone will undoubtedly give young female artists immense inspiration in their own creative pursuits.

While the art world is still largely dominated by deceased male artists in both the literature, fixations and numbers of it all, there’s something to be said about the female artists’ rise and a hope for the balancing of the scales in terms of whose work will be spoken about at length in a hundred years from now.