On view: October 24, 2020–January 31, 2021
Julie Mehretu (American, born Ethiopia, 1970), Haka (and Riot), 2019, ink and acrylic on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Andy Song. © Julie Mehretu, photograph by Tom Powel Imaging.
Julie Mehretu is the artist’s first retrospective, bringing together paintings, drawings, and prints that illustrate the evolution of her work over the past twenty-five years. From early works inspired by cartography and influenced by the notion of cities as sociopolitical constructs to works built with complex layers of color, lines, brushstrokes, and superimposed architectural renderings, the exhibition will cover the arc of Mehretu’s career. It will also explore her consideration of scale and technique, as well as her handmade and mechanical processes, evident in her intimate, detailed drawings and meticulous prints. In addition, the exhibition will consider Mehretu’s relationship to the history of abstract painting by including recent works that foreground her characteristic gestural mark making. Mehretu became known to a broader audience after her inclusion in the groundbreaking 2001 exhibition Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She has since become one of the most influential artists of her generation and received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” in 2005 and the US State Department’s National Medal of Arts in 2015.
Exhibition Catalogue
One of The New York Times’s “Best Art Books of 2019,” Julie Mehretu is available for purchase at the Museum Shop and at museumshop.high.org.
Photo of the artist: Courtesy of Julie Mehretu.
