Marlene Dumas Hon RA (b. 1953)

Born in 1953 in Kuilsrivier, South Africa, Dumas studied BA Fine Art at the University of CapeTown. She moved to the Netherlands to continue a postgraduate study at Ateliers ‘63. She lives and works in Amsterdam. Through the focus on the human figure, Dumas deals with prejudices and interpretations of images. In her paintings and drawings she explores constructions of identity and the complex range of human emotions probing questions of gender, race and socio-political issues through her gestural technique.

She exhibits regularly at galleries in Belgium, London, New York and Tokyo. She has had major solo exhibitions throughout the globe and has participated in many international exhibitions over the last 30 years.

In 2008, the retrospective Measuring your own Grave was organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which toured to The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, in 2009. Intimate Relations marked her first solo exhibition in South Africa and was held at the Iziko South African National Gallery, Capetown in 2007 and moved to the Standard bank Gallery, Johannesburg in 2008. The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo hosted the artist’s first comprehensive solo show in Japan in 2007. Titled Broken White it travelled to the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Marugame, Japan. A retrospective of her drawings was exhibited in 2002 in the New Museum, New York, the Musee Pompidou in Paris and de Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in Tilburg.

In 2015, a major retrospective of the work of Dumas was held at Tate Modern in London.