The Most Expensive Living Female Artists vs. Their Male Counterparts
- Jenny Munoz
- Aug 21
- 4 min read
In 2024, the global art market generated an estimated $57.5 billion in sales, a striking figure, but one that also masks the persistent disparities in representation and valuation across gender lines. According to the June 2025 Sotheby's Insight Report: Women Artists, powered by ArtTactic, the needle is moving for women artists. Progress is real, measurable, and encouraging—yet, a look at the upper echelons of the market reveals a familiar imbalance.
In 2024, 1,148 women artists were represented at major auctions—a 131.9% increase from 2018 and the highest on record. Their share of sales more than doubled from 6.2% in 2018 to 13.8% in 2024. Young and contemporary women artists are driving that growth: in the first five months of 2025, they made up 44.6% of the Young Contemporary category, nearly achieving parity.
Yet despite these gains, the most expensive artworks by living women artists still command a fraction of what collectors are willing to pay for works by living male artists. As in any other industry, supply and demand drive prices. But in the art world, the "supply" is not just what's available—it's what's exhibited, promoted, collected, and ultimately resold. And "demand" is shaped not simply by taste, but by decades of canon-building, institutional endorsement, and market inertia.
If women artists are now more visible than ever, the ultimate test of value—what collectors are willing to pay at the highest levels—suggests that market confidence is still catching up to cultural visibility. Auction houses are starting to place serious bets: guarantees reached 78.3% of women artist sales in early 2025, a historic high. The $1m+ segment is becoming more robust. But when we stack the most expensive living women artists against their male peers, the gap is undeniable.
Top 5 Most Expensive Works at Auction by Living Female Artists
Marlene Dumas (b. 1953, South Africa) | Miss January (1997) | Sold: $13.6 million (Christie's, 2025)
Jenny Saville (b. 1970, UK) | Propped (1992) | Sold: $12.4 million (Sotheby's, 2018)
Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Ethiopia) | Walkers with the Dawn and Morning, (2008) | Sold: $10.7 million (Sotheby's, 2023)
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Japan) | Untitled (Nets) (1959) | Sold: $10.5 million (Phillips, 2022)
Lisa Brice (b. 1968, South Africa) | After Embah (2018) | Sold: $6.9 million (Sotheby's, 2025)
Top 5 Most Expensive Works at Auction by Living Male Artists
Jeff Koons (b. 1955, USA) | Rabbit (1986) | Sold: $91.1 million (Christie's, 2019)
David Hockney (b.1983, UK) | Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) | Sold: $90.3 million (Christie's, 2018)
Beeple (Mike Winkelmann (b.1981, USA)) | Everydays: The First 5000 Days, (2021) | Sold: $69.3 million (Christie's, 2021)
Ed Ruscha (b. 1937, USA) | Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) | $68.26 million (Christie's, 2024)
Gerhard Richter (b. 1932, German) | Abstraktes Bild (1986) | Sold: $46.3 million (Sotheby's, 2015)
Even with rising sell-through rates (85.1% in early 2025) and rising average prices ($268,888), living female artists have yet to break the kind of records their male counterparts routinely do. Marlene Dumas' $13.6 million record is an achievement—but it's still a fraction of Jeff Koons' $91 million or David Hockney's $90.3 million.
The disparity is not necessarily about talent or vision—it's about access and belief. A handful of mega-galleries—David Zwirner, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, White Cube, among others—control 80% of the women artist auction market. And while representation is expanding, 23.6% of artists at auction in 2024 were women, meaning three-quarters of the market still skews male.
But there's reason for optimism. Works by women have outperformed those by men in recent resale markets, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.6%—equal to that of male artists, but over a shorter holding period (14.2 years vs 20.7 years). This signals a shift: collectors are buying—and reselling—female artists with more urgency and confidence.
In today's market, we're witnessing a moment of reckoning and realignment. The question is no longer whether women artists can reach the same levels of critical acclaim—they already do. The question now is whether the collecting class, and the institutions that surround it, will catch up financially.
The art market has long been shaped by exclusion, and its values reflect its history. But if demand creates value, then the best way to close the price gap is clear: collect women artists—not just because they are women, but because their work is shaping the future of art.
And the more we buy, exhibit, write about, and champion them, the faster we rewrite the story—price tags included.
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Thank you for being part of this journey!
xx Jenny