Carmen Herrera was a Cuban-born American artist whose Minimalist geometries broke new ground in histories of global abstraction. The visual syncopation in Untitled (Halloween) (1948), made during Herrera’s formative years in post-war Paris, is an early example of the rigorous Minimalist language for which she would later become known. Living in Paris from 1948 to 1956, Herrera was exposed to various styles of abstraction – sourced from European, Latin American, and South American traditions – that she distilled into her developing practice. Her paintings from this period, given the post-war shortage of materials, were often made on burlap and executed in acrylic, with Herrera being the first artist to use the medium in Europe. In this painting, her economy of curve and line yields a field of reactive shapes and contrasting colours, an interplay between alternating orange and black forms. Composed within a squared oval shape, these choices offer a pictorial exercise in rhythm and variation, all while evoking the holiday that gives the painting its namesake.
This is the first time the work of Carmen Herrera is presented at Biennale Arte.
—C J Salapare
