Art Fact Friday #31 Julie Mehretu
- William Mandela Matthews
- Feb 23, 2024
- 3 min read
An Ethiopian American visual artist, whose work is characterized by large scale multi-layered abstract paintings. The artist shows the impact of sociopolitical changes. The New York Times has said the artist is a "rare example of a contemporary Black female painter who has already entered the canon." The artist incorporates technical drawings of urban buildings and linear illustrations of urban efficiency. The artist drawings involve layers of complex, abstracted images of social interaction. The artist has exhibited in a multitude of museums and biennials including the Carnegie International, Sydney Biennial, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, dOCUMENTA, Sharjah Biennial, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge, UK and the 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
Born November 28, 1970 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Julie Mehretu, fled the country in 1977 to escape political turmoil and moved to East Lansing, Michigan. Mehretu received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in her junior year she studied at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar, Senegal, then the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1997. Later that year she received a residency in the CORE program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2000 she received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 2001 She recieved the Penny McCall Award. In 2003 she received a residency at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 2003. In 2004 she created Emperial Construction, Istanbul and Stadia I, II, and III. 2005 she received the prestigious "genius grant” of the MacArthur Fellowship.
The painting Vanescere was created in 2007. In 2007, Goldman Sachs commissioned Mehretu for $5 million dollars to create a lobby mural. The New Yorker stated the mural was "the most ambitious painting I've seen in a dozen years". Also in 2007 she received the Guna S. Mundheim Visual Arts Fellowship working at American Academy in Berlin. Later that year, she led a residency program for art students from Detroit public high schools. Parts of Fragment, Berliner Plätze and Middle Grey were created between 2007 and 2009. 2008–2009 she created seven painting for the Deutsche Guggenheim; titled Grey Area. In 2012 Mogamma: A Painting in Four Parts was included in dOCUMENTA.
The Round City, Hatshepsut and Insile were created in 2013. Also, Mehretu was awarded the Barnett and Annalee Newman Award. In 2015, she accepted the US Department of State Medal of Arts. 2019 a career survey of Mehretu’s work displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, later traveled to The High Museum, Atlanta, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Walker Museum of Art, Minneapolis.
In 2020, Time magazine named Mehretu one of its 100 most influential people. In 2023, BMW selected Mehretu to paint their "art car" for the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Also her piece Untitled sold for $9.32 million breaking Sotheby's at Hong Kong auction record for an African artist. Mehretu is a member of the Artists Committee of Americans for the Arts. She has participated in a number of collaborative projects though out America, including Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Crown Point Press in San Francisco, Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, and Derrière L'Etoile Studios and Burnet Editions in New York City.
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