Julie Mehretu - Art Market

Art Market

Mehretu's painting Untitled 1 sold for $US1,022,500 at Sotheby's in September 2010. It's estimated value had been $600–$800,000.

Mehretu is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery in New York and by White Cube in London as well as by carlier gebauer in Berlin.

In 2010, Mehretu's work was the object of the Lehmann v. The Project Worldwide case before the New York Supreme Court. The case involved legal issues over her work and the right of first refusal contracts between her then-gallery and a collector. In return for a $75,000 loan by the collector Jean-Pierre Lehmann to the Project Gallery, made in February 2001, the gallery was to give Lehmann a right of first refusal on any work by any artist the gallery represented, and at a 30 per cent discount until the loan was repaid. According to Lehmann, the loan was primarily designed to buy access to works by Mehretu. However, the agreement between Lehmann and The Project expressly provided that four other individuals also have the right of first choice to any work by any artist represented by the gallery. The gallery sold 40 works by Mehretu during the period of the contract, and only one was offered first to Lehmann. Lehmann suspected that his agreement was not being honoured after seeing several large paintings by Mehretu belonging to other collectors in an exhibition at the Walker Art Center and sued for breach of contract. The case, eventually won by the collector, reveiled to a wider public precisely what prices and discounts galleries offer various collectors and galleries on paintings by Mehretu - information normally concealed by the art world. It also was the first case to try to enforce the right to buy contemporary art.