Marlene Dumas’ portrait of Marilyn Monroe

Cherry B.
3 min readJun 14, 2022

I took my time in Palazzo Grassi, Venice one Sunday afternoon and discovered the magical portraits of Marlene Dumas. Many of them are ugly, distorted — far from glamour and beauty but they are so raw, so real — authentic portrayals of life.

Marlene Dumas. Dead Marilyn. 2008

It has taken me a long time to put this experience into words. Sometimes I just tend to wait and see whether, after enough time has passed, an idea…

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