Carmen Herrera, a Cuban-born abstract artist, died on February 12 at 106 at her Manhattan home. Artist Antonio Bechara revealed the revelation with The New York Times. Lisson Gallery, which has represented Herrera for the last 12 years, also confirmed her death. In May, the art gallery in New York will host a solo show honoring the artist on what would have been her 107th birthday.
Everything you need to know about Carmen Herrera
Herrera was born in Cuba in 1915 and is recognized for her abstract paintings and sculptures. After a year at the University of Havana, she enrolled at the Art Students League. Herrera married instructor Jesse Loewenthal in 1939 and lived in Paris until 1954. Carmen Herrera exhibited her art at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris from 1949 to 1953. “Men controlled everything, not just art,” she said. She began using geometric patterns, bright hues, and asymmetry after leaving Paris.
Herrera began creating Estructuras Monumentales in the 1960s; the three-dimensional sculptures debuted in 2019 at City Hall Park in New York. She exhibited at Cisneros Gallery, Trabia Gallery, and Rastovski Gallery between the 1960s and 1980s. Carmen Herrera’s first big museum exhibition was in 1998 at New York’s El Museo del Barrio. It featured her black-and-white works from 1951 to 1959.
However, she made her first sale in 2004 at the age of 89. In 2009, she had her first solo display in Europe at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. She joined Lisson Gallery in 2010, which has locations in New York, London, and Shanghai. On the occasion of Herrera’s 100th birthday in 2015, Alison Klayman-directed documentary titled The 100 Years Show. Lines of Sight, an exhibition of Herrera’s paintings created between 1948 and 1978, was shown at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2016.
“Raised the bar for the whole art world,” says one tribute to Carmen Herrera.
People from all around the globe began paying respect to the musician shortly after the news broke. Here are some tweets from artists and non-artists that paid tribute to Carmen Herrera.
