While it’s no secret that the list of the most expensive artists at auction is heavily dominated by males, some female artists have nonetheless been gaining serious ground in recent times. Just this year saw Frida Kahlo’s El Sueño (La Cama) (1940) set a new record for an artwork by a female artist at auction when it sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby’s. Marlene Dumas, meanwhile, became the most expensive living woman artist in May after her Miss January (1997) realized $13.6 million at Christie’s.

Dumas leads a group of living women artists whose works have hit new heights at auction—from blue-chip names like Yayoi Kusama to contemporary stars such as Cecily Brown. Below is a list of the 10 top-selling women in the field, based on data from the Artnet Price Database.

10. Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel, Untitled (in 2 parts (1985–88). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Auction record: $4.9 million, for Untitled (in 2 parts) (1985–88)

The German conceptual artist is best known for work that ranges and spans across media. Her most expensive artwork emerges from her experiments with a mechanized knitting machine that produced her wool paintings—in turn subverting a feminine craft with an industrialized production process. The knitted motifs on her top-selling piece, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2014, further nod to consumer culture, a Pop practice. Trockel’s second most expensive work is another knitted painting, Made in Western Germany (1987), which sold for $1.8 million in 2016.

9. Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley, Gala (1974) on view at Sotheby’s New York, 2009. Photo: Don Emmert / AFP via Getty Images.

Auction record: $5.7 million, for Gala (1974)

As critic Robert Melville once put it: “No painter, dead or alive, has ever made us more aware of our eyes than Bridget Riley.” Her Op-Art paintings continue to dazzle critics and buyers alike. The top price of £4.3 million ($5.7 million) was set for the artist at Christie’s London, when a gray 1966 work, titled Untitled (Diagonal Curve), exceeded the high end of the estimate. It is one of two Riley works to sell above $5 million at auction. To date, more than 50 of her paintings have commanded above $1 million each at auction.

8. Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman, a set of 21 Untitled Film Stills (1977). Courtesy Christie’s.

Auction record: $6.8 million, for Untitled Film Stills (1977–80)

Sherman’s photographs, which have long probed femininity and identity, have made her the best-selling artist working in the medium in the past 20 years. Fittingly, it’s her Untitled Film Stills, a series that launched her into the field, that’s behind her auction record, set at Christie’s New York in 2014. That same sale has also landed her on the list of the most expensive American artists, where she is the only woman. To date, more than 20 of her works have fetched over $1 million each at auction.

7. Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Oceans) (1987–88). Image courtesy Phillips.

Auction record: $7.7 million, for Untitled (Ocean) (1987–88)

Celmins is famous for her photorealistic drawings of natural environments, from desert terrains to night skies. Her series of ocean paintings offer tight crops of a vast body of water, affording views not of its sheer size but its undulations, rhythms, and patterns. Four of these ocean pieces make up the Latvian-American artist’s top 10 most expensive artworks, of which this one leads the pack when it surpassed its $6.5 million high estimate at Phillips New York in 2021.

6. Cady Noland

Cady Noland, Oozewald (1989) on view at Punta della Dogana in Venice. Photo: Eric Vandeville / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

Auction record: $9.7 million, for Bluewald (1989)

Noland is not one to shy away from the failures and injustices of the American dream. Her Bluewald sculpture excerpts an image Lee Harvey Oswald, moments before being shot by Jack Ruby, pockmarking it with holes that allude to a visceral violence. A small cotton American flag is attached to the aluminum print. It sold at Christie’s New York in 2015, four years after another iteration of Noland’s Oswald sculpture, Oozewald (1989), went for $6.5 million at Sotheby’s New York, making her the bestselling living woman artist for a time.

5. Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown, High Society (1997–98). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Auction record: $9.8 million, for High Society (1997–98)

The market for the British artist’s masterful paintings has not stopped popping, with the majority of her top 20 most expensive works being sold within the past five years. High Society smashed the artist’s auction record when it soared past its $6 million high estimate at Sotheby’s New York last month. It sees the painter at the pinnacle of her figurative powers, presenting a large-scale work that bottles the dizzying theatricality of celebrity. The work was inspired by the titular 1965 musical starring Bing Crosby, and emerged from Brown’s 1990s series of paintings—The Pyjama Game, Suddenly Last Summer—similarly nodding to Hollywood’s Golden Age. “High Society had something going on it that preoccupied me for many years to come,” Brown noted in 2020.

4. Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama Untitled (Nets)(1959). Image Courtesy of Phillips.

Auction record: $10.4 million, for Untitled (Nets) (1959)

The world continues to be in thrall to the Japanese artist whose infinity rooms and polka dots have filled museums and Louis Vuitton stores. Her market continues to climb as well: Untitled (Nets) sold for a record sum at Phillips New York in 2022, hot on the heels of ever increasing prices for her work, including a 2013 pumpkin painting that went for $8 million in 2021 and another infinity net painting from 1959 that went for $7.9 million in 2019. Her record-making canvas came from the collection of Günther Uecker, and is blanketed with the mark-making that epitomizes Kusama’s obsessive practice.

3. Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu, Walkers With the Dawn and Morning. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Auction record: $10.7 million, for Walkers With the Dawn and Morning (2008)

Mehretu’s wild, often large scale works seem to suggest an architectural plan from outer space. The waiting list for one of her works is said to be quite lengthy, so buyers have eagerly snapped up works at auction when they become available. Her current record was set in 2023 at Sotheby’s New York by this intricate, symbolic canvas, which debuted at Prospect. 1 in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. To date, 30 of Mehretu’s works have sold for more than $1 million each at auction.

2. Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville, Propped (1992). Image: © Jenny Saville, Courtesy Gagosian.

Auction record: $12.4 million, for Propped (1992)

Following its debut at the British painter’s degree show, Saville’s self-portrait showed up at the seminal “Sensation” exhibition at Charles Saatchi’s gallery in 1997, making quite the splash for its frank subversion of female portraiture. More than a decade on, it would make another claim for the headlines when it doubled its estimate at Sotheby’s London in 2018, setting a new auction record for the artist. (Adjusted for inflation, the sum today would be about $16 million, giving Saville a good claim for the top spot on this list.)

1. Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas, Miss January (1997). Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd. 2025.

Auction record: $13.6 million, for Miss January (1997)

While the prices for Dumas’s haunting figurative paintings have steadily climbed for years, the record $13.6 million paid for Miss January at Christie’s New York earlier this year was still a stunner. The South African painter does not have the name recognition of Kusama or Saville, and her previous record was set in 2008 by the $6.3 million raked in by The Visitor (1995). Still, her works have quietly gained market traction: to date, nearly 40 of her paintings have sold over $1 million at auction, with sales going as far back as 2004.

This story was originally published on January 16, 2017. It was updated on December 8, 2025, to reflect the new additions to the list.