“There is nothing I love more than to make a straight line…It’s the beginning of all structures really.”
Carmen Herrera (b. 1915, Havana, Cuba; d. 2022, New York, NY) was a pioneer of abstract minimalism. Her passion for line, structure, and clarity shaped her singular visual language, which was rooted in design, yet pulsing with energy and intuitive harmony.
Her work balances the careful simplicity of architectural drawing with the lively immediacy of pure abstraction. Using solid, unmodulated colors, Herrera created radiant compositions that are formally spare yet emotionally charged. Her works are deeply considered, carefully drafted, and executed with precision. They are dynamic and full of quiet tension, offering explorations of space and shape that feel both meticulous and spontaneous.
Born in Havana, Herrera studied painting and sculpture in the 1930s at the Lyceum, a progressive cultural center for women in Cuba, before enrolling in architecture at the Universidad de La Habana in 1938. Though she studied there for only one year, architectural theory left an enduring mark on her work. After relocating to New York in 1939, and later to Paris, she began to develop her mature style defined by a formal interplay between structure and color and an interest in the poetic possibilities of shape.
Throughout her life, Herrera received little institutional recognition, due in part to her gender and her divergence from dominant artistic trends like Abstract Expressionism. Yet she remained steadfast, working in near-anonymity for decades before gaining international recognition in her later years. Her first solo show in Europe came in 2009; a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum followed in 2016. Working at the boundaries of painting and sculpture, Herrera created works that blend minimalism and expressiveness.