16 Facts About Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970, the first child of an Ethiopian college professor of geography and a Jewish American Montessori teacher.

Julie Mehretu's canvases incorporate elements from technical drawings of various urban buildings and linear illustrations of urban efficiency, including city grids and weather charts.

Julie Mehretu's drawings are similar to her paintings, with many layers forming complex, abstracted images of social interaction on a global scale.

In Stadia I, II, and III Julie Mehretu conveys the cultural importance of the stadium through marks and layers of flat shape.

Julie Mehretu was a resident of the CORE Program, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Artist-in-Residence Program at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

In 2000, Julie Mehretu was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

Julie Mehretu was the recipient of the 2001 Penny McCall Award.

In 2007, while completing a residency at the American Academy in Berlin, Julie Mehretu received the 15th commission of the Deutsche Bank and Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation.

In 2013, Julie Mehretu was awarded the Barnett and Annalee Newman Award and in 2015 Julie Mehretu received the US Department of State Medal of Arts from Secretary of State John Kerry.

In 2016, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned Julie Mehretu to create a diptych, with each massive painting flanking the staircase in the atrium which is accessible and free to the public.

In 2001, Julie Mehretu participated in the exhibition Painting at the Edge of the World at the Walker Art Center.

Julie Mehretu has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including one at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson.

Julie Mehretu's work has appeared in Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem ; The Americans at the Barbican Gallery in London ; White Cube gallery in London, the Busan Biennale in Korea ; the 8th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, Lithuania ; and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Julie Mehretu's work was included in the "In Praise of Doubt" exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in the summer of 2011 as well as dOCUMENTA in Kassel in 2012.

Julie Mehretu's painting Untitled 1 sold for $1.02 million at Sotheby's in September 2010.

Julie Mehretu subsequently wrote Haye demanding $17,500, and, after no offer of Mehretu pieces was made, he filed suit.