Description

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An overdue evaluation of the life and work of a prolific and significant contemporary artist

Cuban-born artist Carmen Herrera (b. 1915) has painted for more than seven decades, though it is only in recent years that acclaim for her work has catapulted the artist to international prominence. This handsome volume offers the first sustained examination of her early career from 1948–78, which spans the art worlds of Havana, Paris, and New York. Essays consider the artist’s early studies in Cuba, her involvement with the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in post-war Paris, and her groundbreaking New York output, as well as situate her work in the context of a broader Latin American avant-garde art. An essay by Dana Miller considers Herrera’s New York work of the 1950s through the 1970s, when Herrera was arriving at and perfecting her signature style of hard edge abstraction. Personal family photographs from Herrera’s archive enrich the narrative, and a chronology addressing the entirety of her life and career features additional documentary images. Over 80 works are illustrated as color plates, making this book the most extensive representation of Herrera’s work to date.

Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art

Exhibition Schedule:

Whitney Museum of American Art
(09/16/16–01/02/17)

Wexner Center for the Arts
(02/04/17–04/16/17)

About the Author

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Dana Miller is Richard DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Serge Lemoine is an art historian and professor emeritus at the Paris IV–Sorbonne University and the former director of the Musée de Grenoble and former president of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Gerardo Mosquera is a curator, critic, art historian, and writer based in Havana, Cuba. Edward J. Sullivan is Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History, New York University. Mónica Espinel is an independent curator and critic based in New York.