A section of Julie Mehretu’s abstract piece Walkers With the Dawn and MorningImage caption: A section of Julie Mehretu’s abstract piece Walkers With the Dawn and Morning
The $10.7m (£8.6m) sale of a painting by Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu has broken the record for a work by an African-born artist to be sold at auction.
Walkers With the Dawn and Morning, the title taken from a Langston Hughes poem, is an abstract creation using ink and acrylic on canvas.
Mehretu painted it as part of an exhibition created in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and its impact on the US city of New Orleans.
Walkers With the Dawn and Morning was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday evening, which saw two bidders competing for the piece with the price gradually edging higher and higher.
It went for $9.5m, but the final cost, once fees are added, took it to the record-breaking sum of $10.7m.
Mehretu, in fact, held the previous record of $9.3m, which was set last month.
Walkers With the Dawn and Morning combines “all aspects of her inimitable style of mark making, including architectural drawing, brightly coloured vectors, and calligraphic sweeps”, Sotheby’s said.
The sale of the work is indicative of the strong interest in contemporary African art, which is now seeing a growing market for abstract work.
“We are moving beyond that initial phase to something more discerning”, Hannah O’Leary, head of Sotheby’s modern and contemporary African art department told the Art Newspaper last month.
Mehretu was born in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in 1970, but moved with her family to the US in 1977 at a time of political strife.
She has become one of the most prominent names in the fast-growing contemporary African art world. Earlier this year she was chosen to create BMW’s next Art Car.
Her work will be painted onto a BMW car that will be part of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race next year.
