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Ethiopian Painter's $10.7 Mln Work Becomes Most Expensive Among Artists of African Origins

© Photo X / @SothebysWalkers with the Dawn and Morning by Julie Mehretu
Walkers with the Dawn and Morning by Julie Mehretu - Sputnik Africa, 1920, 16.11.2023
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The demand for contemporary African art is growing and growing: works by African-born contemporary artists grossed $63 million at auction in 2022, up from the previous record of $47 million in 2021, according to the French online art price database Artprice. This Ethiopian artist is another living proof of this.
A painting by an Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu was sold for $10.7 million at Sotheby's auction in New York on Wednesday, making it the most expensive painting by an artist of African descent ever sold at auction.
The canvas was painted in 2008 and named after the eponymous poem by Langston Hughes, Walkers with the Dawn and Morning. The "hypnotically tumultuous and exactingly constructed" work celebrates "Black perseverance post-Hurricane Katrina" and "considers human resilience after unthinkable disaster," as Sotheby's described.
An artist mixes paints on a pallet next to some fallen leaves while trying to capture the colours of autumn in downtown Shanghai on November 27, 2014 - Sputnik Africa, 1920, 25.10.2023
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Notably, Mehretu broke her own recent record: last month at Sotheby's Hong Kong contemporary evening sale, her untitled diptych from 2001 was sold for $9.3 million, setting a new record for an artist of African descent, Sotheby's said on Instagram*.
Julie Mehretu was born in 1970 in Addis Ababa. Her family moved to the US in 1977 due to the unstable political situation in her homeland. She is known for her multi-layered paintings of large-scale and abstract landscapes dedicated to socio-political changes in modern cities.
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