Marlene Dumas Confronts the Beauty and Ugliness of History

Marlene Dumas, Burnt Out Heart, 1992. Estimate $30,000–40,000.

In 1976, at the age of 23, Dumas fled the political and cultural dominance of apartheid in her homeland and moved to Amsterdam, where she continued her art education.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, Measure It, 1986. Estimate $6,000—8,000.

This self-imposed exile has fueled the powerful sense of alienation so redolent in her art.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, The Black Man, The Jew And The Girl, 1993. Estimate $2,000–3,000.

‘Apartheid’ itself means ‘apartness.’ Dumas's work underscores both the anxiety and the loneliness of life within a divided country.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, Jesse, Black Music, 1991.Estimate $10,000–15,000.

Politically charged, her work confronts difficult taboos of sexuality, race, power, and historical violence.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, The Model As A Little Girl, 1991. Estimate $15,000–20,000.

Dumas does not work directly from life, rather she culls a vast archive of images she’s assembled– from her own family photos to pages from popular magazines. From these, Dumas finds inspiration for her gestural, expressive works.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, Art/Target Posing For David Salle, 1987. Estimate $8,000–12,000.

Dumas's work often takes the human figure as its subject. It is telling that there is absolutely no cultural history of the nude in South African art.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, Small Dark Portrait (With White Teeth), 1993–1999. Estimate $80,000–120,000.

With her racially ambiguous subjects, Dumas aims to confront the falsity of racial difference.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, Overexposure, circa 1991. Estimate $6,000–8,000.

Indeed, resistance to apartheid ideology has in many ways been the catalyst for Dumas’s artwork, especially in the years leading up to its abolishment in 1994.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, Untitled (Child's Head), circa 1992. Estimate $20,000–30,000.

Black/white, beauty/ugliness, good/bad: these dichotomies represent the very core of her practice.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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Marlene Dumas, No Body, 1993. Estimate $60,000–80,000.

In the more than 30 years since Dumas first rose to prominence in the 1980s, she has continued explore the provocative overlaps between political and personal realms. Dumas lives and works in Amsterdam.

TO LIVE WITH ART: The Jerome & Ellen Stern Collection
5 March | New York

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