Carmen Herrera, Untitled (Orange and Black) (1956), final price $1,179,000, via Phillips

Carmen Herrera, the Cuban-born painter who found success late in her career, has passed away at the age of 106. A pioneer and longtime explorer of hard-edged graphical abstraction and minimalist compositions, Herrera was a quiet but consistent voice in the development of 20th Century art, and a formative voice in the language of the postwar avant-garde. 

Born in Havana on May 31st, 1915, Herrera grew up in a cultured home, part of her parents work as newspaper reporters in the Cuban capital. She would travel to Paris to study, and then moved to New York, where she took classes at the Art Students League and began to explore her unique geometrical style. The work was years ahead of its time, situated amid the predominant obsession of the time with abstract expressionism, yet Herrera would continue in her pursuit of these clean, delicately balanced compositions.

Carmen Herrera, Green and Orange (1958), via Art Observed

Carmen Herrera, Painting in Process (Installation View), via Art Observed

It was only late in life, after years of painting, that Herrera would begin receiving her due, with an exhibition at The Whitney serving as a springboard to a renewed interest and fascination with the artist’s pioneering vision. “It’s about time,” said at the time. “There’s a saying that you wait for the bus and it will come. I waited almost a hundred years.”

She is survived by a niece and a nephew.

Read more:
Carmen Herrera, Cuban-Born Artist Who Won Fame at 89, Dies at 106 [NYT]

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