Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu (born 1970 in Addis Ababa ) is an American painter.

Life

Julie Mehretu was born in 1970 as the first child of an Ethiopian college professor and an American teacher in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They fled the country in 1977 and moved to East Lansing, Michigan, for the teaching of her father at Michigan State University. In 1992, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. After a year abroad at the University Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, she attended the Rhode Iceland School of Design in Providence, which she graduated in 1997 with a Master of Fine Arts.

Since 1999 lives and works in Julie Mehretu New York City; she shares her studio with her partner Jessica Rankin.

Work

The supporting element and starting point of their large format and highly complex paintings are architectural and urban plans, indicate the diverse types of movement: flight routes, airports, wind and water currents, highways, subways or telephone networks.

The artist combines in her work, painting and drawing; she speaks even of "drawing into painting". In the overall view of the paintings from multi-layer synthetic resin layers seem abstract, while in detail narrative elements are legible. So used Mehretu small-scale symbols of consumer culture: advertising graphics and logos as well as graffiti, tattoos and comics.

The Mehretu's brushwork recalls in part to Chinese calligraphy. However, it can also attract formal connections to the work of Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich.

Migration and war, autobiography and visionary forms the basis for your suggestive imagery, which can be read as metaphors of globalized socio-political conditions of the early 21st century.

Works (selection)

  • 2005: Black City ( Black City)
  • 2005: Happy Weather ( storm weather). The work, consisting of three graphic sheets (Local Calm / Local peace; Diffraction / Diffraction; Circulation / circulation) was three weeks after Hurricane Katrina. The title refers to the eponymous work by Caravaggio in 1607
  • 2004: Seven Acts of Mercy ( Seven Works of Mercy)
  • 2003: Congress ( Congress )
  • 2001: Untitled I. The work was auctioned in 2010 for $ 850,000.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2010: Julie Mehretu: Grey Area. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
  • 2009: Julie Mehretu: Grey Area. German Guggenheim, Berlin, DE
  • 2008: Julie Mehretu: City sitings. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, USA
  • 2007: Julie Mehretu: Black City. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk
  • 2007: Julie Mehretu: Black City. Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover
  • 2006: Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent. Hayward Gallery, London
  • Centre Pompidou, Paris
  • 2005: Currents. Saint Louis Art Museum
  • 2004: Matrix. Berkeley Art Museum, University of California Berkeley
  • Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
  • 26th Bienal de Sao Paulo
  • 2003: Julie Mehretu: Drawing into Painting. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
  • Istanbul Biennial
  • 2002: Drawing Now: Eight Propositions. Museum of Modern Art in New York
  • 2000: Five Continents and One City. Museo de la Cludad de México, Ciudad de México
  • Greater New York. P.S.1, New York

Public collections

  • Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk
  • Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York

Awards and Scholarships (selection)

  • 2005 American Art Award 2005 - Whitney Museum of Art, New York
  • 2005 MacArthur Fellow
  • 2002 Penny McCall Foundation Grant
Rhode Island School of Design Providence, Rhode Island Kazimir Malevich Deutsche Guggenheim Integrated Authority File
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