The Three Trees, 1643

Mehretu has worked in printmaking since she was a graduate student. The methodical process of making prints, which includes decisions about line, weight, color, and layering, has informed her painting practice. “Lots of small marks have power,” she has explained, hinting at the social and political implications at the root of her approach to abstraction.

In Rembrandt’s iconic etching The Three Trees, numerous curlicues suggest foliage, while dense crosshatches evoke shade. In Haka, titled after a Māori war dance, Mehretu echoes Rembrandt’s monochromatic palette of stra nds, dots, and dashes, but uses them to evoke an action rather than to describe a landscape. The thin lines that resemble rain in the Rembrandt work take on a cosmic force in Haka, becoming interchangeably celebratory and catastrophic.