Marlene Dumas - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, May 11, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam
    Sale: Phillips de Pury & Co., New York, Contemporary Art Part II, November 17, 2006, lot 134
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Literature

    D. van den Boogerd, B. Bloom and M. Casadio, eds., Marlene Dumas, London 1999, p. 60 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Marlene Dumas’s work intrigues the viewer of the complex nature of the resistance it offers. Not only does it resist a description of its painterly and formal properties, owing to the subtlety and calculated randomness of the application of paint, but the ambiguity of the work’s content also resists interpretation. It must also be said that no account of this painter’s work can ever be exhaustive, because each painting is a unique, fused amalgam of expressive marks on the canvas, bursting with all kinds of autobiographical, socio-critical, psychological, ethical, biblical, cultural, and folkloristic references. (M. van Niekerk, ‘Mass for The Painter’, Marlene Dumas \ Intimate Relations, South Africa, 2007, p.111)

175

Before Birth

1989
oil on canvas
19 5/8 x 15 5/8 in. (49.8 x 39.7 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated "before birth, M Dumas, 1989" on the reverse.

Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

Contemporary Art Day Sale

Contemporary Art Day
11 May 2012
New York