ART-PRESENTATION: Carmen Herrera
Carmen Herrera was discovered at the age of 89 after painting full-time for more than 60 years. Now recognised as a pioneer of geometric abstraction and Latin American Modernism, her radiant geometric paintings are striking in their formal control. The influence of her architectural studies at the University of Havana is clear. From the beginning, Carmen Herrera’s personal path to abstraction has been characterized by order and simplicity. These qualities are evident both in her definition of forms and her use of strong color.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lisson Gallery Archive
An exhibition of recent paintings by Carmen Herrera will inaugurate Lisson Gallery’s first permanent exhibition space in New York, unveiling a new body of work produced over the last two years.This exhibition exemplifies Herrera’s mastery of larger scale canvases, including subtle incorporations of diptych and triptych configurations. In addition to the inclusion of recurring motifs within her compositions such as: the chevron, the chequerboard reversal and numerous, varying triangular and quadrangular forms. Born in Cuba in 1915, throughout the ‘30s and ;40s Herrera moved between France and her homeland. In the late forties and early fifties she exhibited in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelle with artists including Ben Nicholson, Jesús Rafael Soto, Pierre Soulages, Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman and Victor Vasarely. These were years which shaped the vision of her life’s work, and she began to reduce her formal vocabulary to its essential elements. Though she continued to produce strong work throughout the ‘50s, particularly with the beginnings of a series of stark black-and-white paintings, Herrera failed to attain the same recognition accorded her peers. Her work, some of which prefigured the later trends of Op Art and Hard-Edged Minimalism, was out of step with the period’s fashion for Abstract Expressionism. She was female in a male world and made reductive, hard-edged abstractions in obscurity, though occasionally appeared in female or Latin American themed group shows. In an interview when she was asked why took so long for her work to be recognized, she said, “Things happen in a funny way. I mean you have to be in the right place at the right time, which I always managed not to be. But at the same time, people were not ready to receive my work. Years ago somebody called Rose Fried had a very Avant-Garde gallery in New York and said she was thinking of giving me a show. Then I went back to the gallery and she said, you know, Carmen, you can paint circles around the men artists that I have but I’m not going to give you a show because you’re a woman. I felt as if someone had slapped me on the face. I felt for the first time what discrimination was. It’s a terrible thing. I just walked out. But anyhow, she’s dead now”. In 1984, after years of exhibiting only sporadically, Herrera received her first retrospective, at the Alternative Museum in New York City, though her first sale did not come until twenty years later at the age of 89. Her works can now be seen as important milestones in evolution of geometric minimalism and she started to become a world famous artist. Paintings that she had thought of throwing away after her husband died in 2000 are now in the collections of MOMA, the Hirshhorn, The Walker Art Center and Tate Modern.
Info: Lisson Gallery, 504 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 3/5-11/6/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.lissongallery.com
