Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu is a renowned contemporary visual artist celebrated for her large-scale, multi-layered abstract paintings and prints. Her intricate works, which often incorporate architectural drawings, maps, and gestural mark-making, explore themes of globalization, urbanization, social conflict, and geopolitics. Based in New York City and Berlin, she has achieved international acclaim, with her art featured in major museums worldwide and commanding significant attention in the art market.

Early life and education

Born in Addis Ababa, her family relocated during political upheaval, eventually settling in East Lansing, Michigan. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Kalamazoo College, where she studied diverse subjects. For postgraduate studies, she attended the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. She later received a Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997, a period that solidified her commitment to painting. Early influences included the works of Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya, and the Italian Renaissance.

Artistic style and influences

Her artistic practice is characterized by a complex, stratified visual language built through a meticulous process of addition and erasure. She begins with underlying architectural renderings of sites like airports, stadiums, and parliaments, often sourced from Google Earth or news media. Over these foundations, she employs dynamic sweeps of color, geometric forms, and frenetic, calligraphic gestures using ink, acrylic, and pencil. This method creates a palpable tension between order and chaos, structure and entropy. Key influences range from Futurism and Abstract Expressionism—particularly the work of Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock—to the history of cartography and the socio-political theories of thinkers like Paul Virilio.

Major works and exhibitions

A seminal early work is the expansive *Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation* (2001), which established her signature style. Her monumental painting *Mural* (2009–2010) was commissioned by Goldman Sachs for their Lower Manhattan headquarters. The epic *Congress* (2003) and the psychologically charged *Stadia* series examine the architecture of power and collective spectacle. Major solo exhibitions have been held at institutions such as the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Serpentine Galleries. A comprehensive mid-career retrospective was organized by the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw and traveled to several European venues. In 2021, she unveiled *HOWL, eon (I, II)*, a major commission for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Recognition and awards

She is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (often called the "Genius Grant") in 2005 and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin in 2007. She has been honored with the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Award and the Artists Rights Society award. Her work is held in the permanent collections of leading institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2020, her painting *Walkers With the Dawn and Morning* set a new auction record for a living female artist at Sotheby's.

Personal life

She maintains studios in both Harlem, New York City, and Berlin, Germany. She is married to the acclaimed artist Jessica Rankin, with whom she has collaborated. Her work and life are deeply informed by her experiences of diaspora, migration, and a critical engagement with contemporary history. She serves on the board of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Category:1970 births Category:American painters Category:Ethiopian painters Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Living people