Artist To Know: Carmen Herrera - Never Too Late

If you have ever thought it might be too late for you to live out your life dreams, then you have to meet abstract artist Carmen Herrera. At the age of 101, had her first retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York after a long life filled with creation and innovation honed in relative obscurity. It was only in the 2000s as she neared the age 100, that Herrera would begin to gain notoriety from the art world.

Artist Carmen Herrera (picture credit: The Telegraph, 12/20/2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/8207018/Carmen-Herrera-Is-it-a-dream.html)

Herrera was born in Cuba in 1915 and studied both art and architecture, selling her first painting at the age of 19. She lived most of her life between New York City and Paris and over her career became fascinated with straight lines which is now identified as a style of “hard edged abstraction.” Her work was often characterized by geometric abstractions with only 2 colors in order to simplify the artwork to key elements. There was a strong emphasis on edges and blocks that mimicked what might be found in built spaces. “I wouldn’t paint the way I do if I hadn’t gone to architecture school.” She also experimented with canvas shapes including triangles and circles.

Picture credit: Lisson Gallery, Luke Stettner, Cheekwood Estates, Artnet News

The fact that she did not receive accolades throughout her art career until the very end seemed in her mind to stem from being an artist who was female. The female curator Rose Fried once told Herrera that she could not exhibit Herrera’s work at her gallery because Herrera was a woman. “The fact that you were a woman was against you,” Herrera found.

However, she carried on with her creative work for decades despite working in near obscurity. “I began a lifelong process of purification, a process of taking away what isn’t essential,” she stated about her work in 2005. Today, Herrera’s work is now in collections around the world including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Perez Art Museum in Miami. So, artist Carmen Herrera’s story indeed proves that it is never to late.

Picture credit: The Guardian, Parrish Art Museum, Caesura Magazine, Fembio