2. Marlene Dumas
A portrait taken from a class picture from her childhood in South Africa sold for $3.3 million, or £2.1 million. In 2008, the year of artist Marlene Dumas’s first US survey, the artist’s auction record reached a new high with the sale at Sotheby’s London of The Visitor (1995), an oil painting of a group of strippers standing expectantly by an open door. Dumas’ work caught the attention of dealer David Zwirner, who in 2008, after years of courting her, finally signed the artist. A portrait taken from a class picture from the artist’s childhood in South Africa sold for $3.3 million.