While the art auctions this month have been staggeringly impressive in terms of artwork being sold for record-breaking prices, The Economist has published an article, based on analysis of data provided by artnet, that highlights the huge discrepancy between the amount of money fetched by post-war female artists and post-war male artists.

As you can see in the image below, a screen short from The Economist article here, Mark Rothko is the male artist with the highest-selling at auction artwork, for Orange, Red, Yellow which was bought for $86million while Louise Bourgeois leads the female post-war artists with her work Spider selling for $10million - a whopping $76million difference between the highest post-war selling artwork by a male and female artist.




While the figures are certainly depressing, Amy Cappellazzo, chairman of post-war and contemporary art development at Christie's, told The Economist that attitudes towards female artists are changing, generationally. "It wasn't long ago that it was hard to be taken seriously as a woman artist. There will be some remedial catch up before women artists have parity on prices."

You can read the full article on post-war artists work at auction in The Economist here.