LISA BRICE
b. 1968, South AfricaLisa Brice’s paintings interrogate and overturn the male gaze embedded in Western art history. Through her luminous cobalt- and cerulean-hued depictions of women, she reclaims the female nude as an empowered, self-determining presence. Brice shifts the art-historical narrative from passive muse to active maker, portraying women who assert authorship and autonomy within liminal, introspective spaces of intimacy, labour, and defiance.
Early Life and Education
Born in Cape Town in 1968, Brice studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, graduating in 1990. She began her career as a printmaking assistant to artist Sue Williamson, before completing a Gasworks residency in London in 1998 and a pivotal residency in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 2000, where she connected with artists Chris Ofili, Peter Doig, and Emheyo Bahabba (Embah). This cross-cultural experience profoundly shaped her visual language and feminist engagement with representation.
Lisa Brice Artworks
Brice’s figures inhabit worlds that traverse the boundaries between private and public, interior and exterior. Recurring motifs such as mirrors, cigarette smoke, bars, and studio thresholds obscure and refract the viewer’s gaze, asserting each subject’s control over how they are seen. Working mainly in oils and ink, Brice’s compositions—layered through drawing, tracing, and print transfer—carry a rhythmic tension between spontaneity and repetition.
Her work engages directly with canonical painters including Édouard Manet and John Everett Millais, subverting their depictions through female subjectivity. Paintings such as No Bare Back, After Embah (2017) and Smoke and Mirrors (2021) exemplify Brice’s transformation of historical material into assertive, self-knowing portraits.
In 2021 she was included in Life Between Islands at Tate Britain, a landmark exhibition tracing Caribbean-British artistic exchanges. Her participation in Mixing It Up: Painting Today (Hayward Gallery, 2021) and Capturing the Moment (Tate Modern, 2023–24) reaffirmed her status at the forefront of contemporary figurative painting.
Brice’s 2025 solo exhibition Keep Your Powder Dry at Sadie Coles HQ inaugurated the gallery’s new Savile Row space. The show foregrounded women in states of alertness and resistance, drawing on imagery from bar scenes, performance spaces, and historical self-defence manuals. The project has been hailed by critics for articulating solidarity and self-protection through painterly sensuality and discipline.
Market and Collecting
Brice’s auction record rose dramatically in 2025 when After Embah (2018) sold at Sotheby’s London for £5.4 million (US$6.9m), more than doubling her previous record. Her works are in major international collections, including Tate Britain and Tate Modern (London), SFMOMA (San Francisco), Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington D.C.), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Johannesburg Art Gallery, and X Museum (Beijing).
Select Solo Exhibitions
- Keep Your Powder Dry, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2025)
- Lives and Works, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (2023)
- Lisa Brice, Charleston Trust, Lewes (2021)
- Smoke and Mirrors, KM21, The Hague (2020)
- Art Now: Lisa Brice, Tate Britain, London (2018)
Select Group Exhibitions
- To Improvise a Mountain, Hayward Gallery, London (2025)
- Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London (2023)
- Paraventi: Folding Screens, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2023)
- Life Between Islands, Tate Britain, London (2021)
- Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021)
Lisa Brice FAQs
Where is Lisa Brice from?
Lisa Brice was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and is based in London.
What is Lisa Brice known for?
Lisa Brice is known for her reimagining of the female nude and her use of deep ultramarine tones to critique and reverse traditional portrayals of women in Western painting.
What is Lisa Brice’s artistic style?
Lisa Brice’s work bridges figuration and abstraction, characterised by layered brushwork, repetition, and an ethereal, sensorial use of blue.
Where can I see Lisa Brice’s art?
Lisa Brice’s works are held by institutions including Tate, SFMOMA, and the Hammer Museum, and represented by Sadie Coles HQ, London.
What is Lisa Brice’s highest auction record?
In 2018, Lisa Brice’s painting After Embah (2018) sold for £5.4 million ($6.9 million) at Sotheby’s London in March 2025.
Ocula | 2025
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