Who

Rising art star Julie Mehretu has used her nomadic life as the basis for her large-scale abstract paintings, which take on themes of public space, history, and war.

Backstory

Born in Addis Ababa to an Ethiopian father and a white mother, Mehretu was seven when her academic parents fled Ethiopia's 1970s communist dictatorship for the considerably colder climes of East Lansing, Michigan. After heading back to her native continent for a year-long stint studying in Senegal, Mehretu attended Kalamazoo College and earned an MFA from RISD before landing in New York.

The attention of the art world arrived in 2000 when she showed her work at P.S. 1's "Greater New York," an exhibition that introduced many to her signature style: map-like compositions combining familiar imagery (such as architectural plans) with abstract forms and graphic references drawn from sources as diverse as Japanese calligraphy and graffiti. In 2001, Mehretu participated along with several other rising black artists in Studio Museum's "Freestyle" show, and was also featured in the Walker Art Center's "Painting at the Edge of the World." Her work has since appeared at the Whitney and Sao Paolo Biennials and she's had a long list of group and solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe.

Of note

Mehretu (it's pronounced "Merit-two") has had a meteoric rise in the last few years. In 2004, her Empirical Construction earned prime placement in curator Ann Temkin's reinstallation of the Museum of Modern Art's contemporary collection; a year later Mehretu won a coveted MacArthur "genius grant" of  $500,000. Prices have risen accordingly: Her paintings now fetch six figures and collectors include hedge funder Dan Loeb, Nicolas and Jeanne Rohatyn, art historian Michael Danoff, and British gallerists Jay Jopling and Thomas Dane. Indeed, Mehretu's art is so heavily in demand that in 2005 a legal feud erupted over access to it, pitting her dealer, Christian Haye, against French/Swiss collector Jean-Pierre Lehmann. In order to keep up with demand, Mehretu now produces six paintings a year with the help of four assistants.

Personal

Mehretu lives with her girlfriend, Australian artist Jessica Rankin, who gave birth to the couple's first child in 2005. Home is a Harlem carriage house they've converted into a modernist loft and studio.