A painting by Marlene Dumas is expected to break the record for the most expensive artwork sold at auction by a living woman artist when it is offered at Christie’s New York on May 14th. Miss January (1997), which depicts a blonde woman nude from the waist down except for a single pink sock, holds an estimate of $12 million to $18 million. It will be included in the auction house’s 21st century evening sale.
The current record for a living woman artist is held by Propped (1992) by Jenny Saville, which sold for £9.5 million ($12.69 million) at Sotheby’s London in 2018. That sale was widely covered at the time, not for Saville’s milestone, but for a Banksy canvas that shredded itself moments after it was sold. Dumas’s current auction record stands at $6.32 million for The Visitor (1995), which sold at Sotheby’s London in 2008.
Miss January comes from the collection of Mera and Don Rubell, longtime collectors and the founders of the Rubell Museum, which has locations in Miami and Washington, D.C. The couple acquired the work more than two decades ago from Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam. In a statement released by Christie’s, the Rubells are selling the work to “continue the family’s mission of collecting and championing emerging artists.”
“Through its monumental scale and singular subject matter, Miss January is truly the magnum opus of Marlene Dumas,” said Sara Friedlander, deputy chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s. “In this painting, Dumas triumphantly demonstrates a formal mastery of the woman’s body while simultaneously freeing it from a tradition of subjection, upending normalized concepts of the female nude through the lens of a male-centric history.”
Christie’s has secured several high-profile consignments for its May evening sales despite a broader downturn in the art market. Other highlights include an electric chair silkscreen by Andy Warhol expected to fetch more than $30 million, and a Jean-Michel Basquiat triptych estimated at $20 million–$30 million.
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