At 105, Carmen Herrera Goes Monumental in New Sculpture Series

Herrera was born in Havana, Cuba in 1915 and raised in a large, cultivated family. As a young woman, Herrera studied art in Paris and New York, but it’s her architectural training at the Universidad de la Habana in the late 1930s that most shaped the artist’s trajectory. “She attributes that moment as encouraging her belief in the beauty of the straight line and of the clarity of form that her work has always had since,” PAF curator Daniel S. Palmer told Art & Object.

Like an architect, Herrera’s basic tools were graph paper, pen, pencil, and masking tape, and her early designs work from floor plans as points of departure. “From the very beginning,” MFAH co-curator Dena Woodall emphasized, “she was thinking in architectural terms even though she wasn’t making buildings.” 

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Herrera lived in Paris, where she immersed herself in the city’s rich, post-war cultural scene. She moved in the same circles as artists like Josef Albers, Max Bill, Theo van Doesburg, Argentine Grupo Madí painters, and Russian Suprematists, and exhibited her work at the city’s Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. In the French capital, Herrera had access to experimental new materials like acrylic paint from Germany, which she mastered well before her American counterparts.

The artist’s years in Paris solidified her style. “I began a lifelong process of purification, a process of taking away what isn’t essential,” Herrera said later of this period. By the time she settled in New York City in 1954, Herrera was already working in her mature mode. Her bold colors and simplified forms would remain steadfast throughout the decades.

Since the 1960s, Herrera has limited herself to working in only two colors at a time. This includes the white walls around her pieces, which–perhaps because of Herrera’s architectural background–she considers part of the work. “She constantly thought between two and three dimensions,” MFAH co-curator Rachel Mohl said, explaining that during the 1960s and 1970s, Herrera “was really trying to figure out how to influence and invade a viewer’s visual perception and physical space.”

Financial support from a fellowship enabled the artist to hire a carpenter who assisted her in creating Azul “Tres” (1971), her first monochromatic, free-standing structure. Herrera’s Estructuras, as she called them, were composed of wood, canvas, and paint, and protruded suggestively off the wall. The stage was set for more sculpture until Herrera’s carpenter died suddenly and her financial resources ran low. Over the next decades, the artist’s three-dimensional impulses developed across her drawings, paintings, and prints instead. 

“The art world really missed how incredible [Herrera] was, partly because she was an immigrant, [and] partly because she was a woman,” Palmer said. But the artist stayed true to her vision, and the opportunity to create the monumental sculptures Herrera had planned finally arose. Because her mobility is limited, Herrera oversaw all aspects of the project via video conferences, 3D renderings, and mockups from her New York studio. Palmer also enlisted the help of Peter Ballantine, a fabricator who created 3D works for Donald Judd and other Minimalists during the 1960s and 1970s, a time when Herrera ironically had to cease her own sculptural experiments.

The results are truly marvelous. Herrera’s sculptures range from seven to twelve feet in size, and practically vibrate under their pure, intense coats of color. Walking around each inventive work uncovers an infinity of dynamic angles and views. All sculptures have a historic date marking when they were conceived on paper in the 1960s and 1970s, and a fabrication date. Though most of the streamlined, colorful sculptures emit a sense of joy, Pavanne (1967/2017)–an interlocking, ultramarine block that stretches nine by nine feet–is a solemn memorial to Herrera’s brother, who was dying of cancer at the time she composed it. Herrera injects an unexpected depth of emotion into her sleek, geometric forms.

How did Herrera respond to seeing her sculptures take shape after so many years? “It really was a dream come true for her,” Palmer reports. Herrera’s story is a testament to the power of keeping the course and being true to oneself. It’s a lesson any person–artist or not–can benefit from.

Carmen Herrera: Structuring Surfaces is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through January 18, 2021. Carmen Herrera: Estructuras Monumentales is on view at Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston through April 23, 2021.