Artist Marlene Dumas won the Johannes Vermeer Prize on Thursday evening for her ‘exceptional talent and her ability to catch human emotions in her paintings’.

Dumas, who was born in South Africa but lives and works in Amsterdam, paints her subjects at the extreme fringes of life’s cycle, from birth to death and uses the human figure as a means to comment on contemporary ideas of racial, sexual and social identity.
Her work is regularly exhibited around the world and is found in the collections of important museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.
The Johannes Vermeer Prize is the Netherlands’ most prestigious art prize. It was set up in 2008 by the state and consists of a monetary award of €100,000.