Marlene Dumas is an internationally recognised contemporary artist, best known for her striking portraits and figure studies. She moved to Amsterdam in 1976, where she completed her studies at Ateliers '63 and developed a highly individual artistic language.
Her work explores themes of identity, emotion, sexuality, politics, and the complexities of the human body and mind. Her paintings, drawings, and occasional video works are often based on photographs, press images, or reproductions, yet are transformed through her expressive brushwork and subtle use of colour. Her figures are at once intimate, confronting, and vulnerable, creating a distinctive tension between familiarity and estrangement.
Alongside artists such as Luc Tuymans, Dumas belongs to the generation that redefined figurative painting in contemporary art, each in their own way. Her work is exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern, London.