CAA News Today
IN MEMORIAM: CARMEN HERRERA
posted Feb 15, 2022
Image source: The New York Times by Todd Heisler
CAA mourns the loss of artist Carmen Herrera who died February 12, 2022 at the age of 106. Recognized by CAA in 2016 as the Distinguished Artist for Lifetime Achievement, Herrera’s career received attention in the last few decades of her life. Born in Cuba in 1915, she originally studied architecture but switched her focus to painting when she moved to New York City in the 1930s. At the age of 89 in 2004, she had her first major show and review at Manhattan’s Latin Collector Gallery. Now her minimalist and hard-edged paintings, with a focus on line, form, and color, are widely celebrated in the collections of major museums around the world. In a 2009 interview she said, “It’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure. I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. . . . And at the end of my life, I’m getting a lot of recognition, to my amazement and my pleasure.”