Carmen Herrera
Frederico Sève Gallery/ latincollector. New York
Carmen Herrera (Havana, 1915) studied architecture at the University of Havana’s School of Architecture, where she discovered what she herself calls “the extraordinary world of straight lines”, which has remained a major interest to date. We have been able to confirm this in her latest exhibition of recent works at Frederico Sève Gallery/ latincollector. For this occasion, Herrera has created seven new monumental-scale works in which she once again takes the elegance of what appears to be her motto less is more to the limit. These works, as for example Pasado, Presente, Futuro (Past, Present, Future) a magnificent series in which the volume emerges like never before from the contours of her geometric shapes; the Castilla series (all works from 2010) or Green Triangle (2009), appear to describe an idyllic architecture of thought that reflects a new and extremely intense sense of space. Indeed, Herrera’s pictorial evolution, her essentialism, has led her to play dialectically with only two colors from whose chromatic and formal contraposition an extraordinary vastness and depth are derived.
Carmen Herrera discovered her artistic identity in Paris, where alongside artists such as Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and many others, she exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, focused on constructivist abstraction. When she returned to New York in 1954, abstract expressionism was at its peak, for which reason her work, then strictly formal, went unnoticed. It was only in 2004 that she began to receive the attention that her extraordinary work deserves. Since then she has been considered a fundamental figure of geometric abstraction, and it has been possible to admire her oeuvre in exhibitions and major collections from around the world. In the meantime Herrera continues working with her unwavering love for the straight line.
