Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović is a Serbian performance artist with an estimated net worth of $10 million. Widely regarded as the “grandmother of performance art,” she has spent more than five decades pushing the boundaries of endurance, presence, and audience participation in contemporary art.

Early Life & Family

Abramović was born on November 30, 1946, in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, to parents who had fought as partisans in World War II and later held positions in the postwar Yugoslav government. Her father, Vojin, served in Marshal Tito’s elite guard, while her mother, Danica, was an art historian who oversaw national monuments. Abramović spent much of her early childhood with her grandmother, whose devout Orthodox faith left a lasting impression on her. She later described her upbringing as strict, particularly under her mother’s control. She showed an early interest in art and was given her own studio at age twelve, eventually enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1965 to study painting.

Rise to Fame

Abramović shifted from painting to performance art in the early 1970s, using her own body as both subject and medium. Her 1974 piece “Rhythm 0,” in which she stood passively for six hours while audience members were invited to use various objects on her, established her willingness to explore risk, vulnerability, and the relationship between artist and viewer — themes that would define her career. Her long personal and artistic partnership with German artist Ulay throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, including collaborative performances that tested physical and emotional endurance, further built her international reputation.

Career History

Abramović has staged performances at major institutions worldwide over her career. She won the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the Venice Biennale in 1997 for “Balkan Baroque.” Her best-known work, “The Artist Is Present,” was staged at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010, where she sat silently at a table for over 700 hours across the length of the museum’s retrospective, inviting visitors to sit opposite her in a silent exchange. The piece drew enormous public and media attention and introduced her work to a much broader audience. She later founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and teaching performance art, and directed the opera “7 Deaths of Maria Callas,” which premiered in 2020. She has also collaborated with musicians, including appearing in Jay-Z’s “Picasso Baby” performance-art-style music video, and published a memoir, “Walk Through Walls,” in 2016.

How They Built Their Wealth

Abramović’s income comes primarily from the sale and licensing of her artwork and performance documentation, museum and gallery fees for staging retrospectives and exhibitions, and speaking and lecture engagements at institutions around the world. She has also earned income through book sales, including her memoir, and through teaching and workshops connected to the Marina Abramović Institute. She has additionally been active in New York real estate over the years, buying and renovating properties in Manhattan.

Personal Life

Abramović had a long personal and professional relationship with fellow performance artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) that lasted from the mid-1970s into the late 1980s; the two later reconciled publicly during her 2010 MoMA retrospective. She has never had children, stating that motherhood would have been incompatible with the demands of her artistic practice. She continues to be active in the international art world into her late seventies.

Marina Abramović’s decades of boundary-pushing performance art have built her an estimated net worth of $10 million, cementing her legacy as one of the most influential and enduring figures in contemporary art.