• The show is the most important survey of Julie Mehretu’s work to date in Europe.

• In her large-format abstract paintings, the Ethiopian-born, New York-based artist captures the contemporary spirit.

• “Julie Mehretu. A Universal History of Everything and Nothing” is on view at Centro Botín from 12 October 2017 to 25 February 2018.

The Centro Botín in Santander presents from 12 October 2017 to 25 February 2018 the exhibition “Julie Mehretu. A Universal History of Everything and Nothing”. The show features a selection of around 30 paintings and 60 drawings from key moments in Mehretu’s practice, making it the most comprehensive exhibition of her work in Europe to date.

Born in Ethiopia in 1970, Mehretu made a name for herself in the New York art scene in the late 1990s with a highly personal vocabulary. Using techniques such as drawing, ink and acrylic, Julie Mehretu combines geometric lines, architectural drawings and urban projections with layers of colour and other more personal elements, brushstrokes and quasi-calligraphic marks.

Maintaining a complex balance between precision and chaos, the forms interact in the canvas sometimes taking the shape of a whirlpool or streams, other times that of pieces bursting in the air as if in an explosion that tries to reach the beholder.

All the surfaces are meticulously worked by the artist. Layers, lines, brushstrokes and marks are juxtaposed on top of each other, other times erased or blurred by Mehretu herself, leaving on the canvas a voluntary trace of movement and interaction.