Cuban artist Carmen Herrera, aged 104, went unnoticed until slightly over a decade ago, but this Wednesday she reached a new goal with the exhibition of a bunch of her large-scale sculptures within the gardens of New York’s City Hall.
“I like that she is finally being recognized and that she is being seen as a historical artistic figure,” said to EFE news agency the curator of the show, Daniel Palmer, of the New York Public Arts Fund.
And it’s that the exhibition, titled “Estructuras Monumentales” and that’s formed by five large-scale monochromatic aluminum sculptures, is being exhibited in the midst of Manhattan, in view of the greater than eight million inhabitants of New York, a city considered the world epicenter of art.
Thus, Palmer points out, one in all Herrera’s great dreams is coming true, to bring her work to the people and that they enjoy it without spending a dime, after many years of frustration through which the Cuban woman was always relegated to the background for the mere fact of being a lady.
“The gallerists told her clearly again and again that they didn’t wish to exhibit her art since the works of girls weren’t selling well,” recalled the curator of the New York cultural organization.
This time, five of her great sculptures, as much as 3.6 meters long, will remain in New York’s City Hall Park from this Wednesday until November 8, three of that are exhibited for the primary time, and the opposite two have only been seen in Europe.
“Estructuras Monumentales” are from an extended time back, as among the pieces were conceived and drawn by Herrera within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, although the scant attention she received at the moment led to them not being produced until two years ago.
One example is the work Pavanne, initially designed as a drawing in 1967 in homage to her brother, who had cancer, and who was only made in 2017.
Situated under the trees of Manhattan’s green area, the sculpture, a vibrant blue, is formed by three pieces that fit together, two in the form of an “L” and one in the form of a “U,” separated by a narrow space that offers a glimpse of the park’s green background.
One other of the outstanding works of the exhibition is Angulo Rojo, a red sculpture in the form of an “A” that receives New Yorkers on the southern entrance to the park, and which is the primary structure the Cuban has designed in greater than three many years, during which she has devoted herself mainly to painting.
Born in Cuba in 1915, Herrera initially moved to Paris after Second World War II, where she perfected her minimalism and geometric abstraction, to maneuver within the Fifties to New York, where she has been living since then.
Although she was a part of New York’s artistic society, her work was largely ignored until she was nearly 90 years old, and recently she has come to be considered probably the most vital figures of the abstract movement and minimalism.
The rise of Herrera has led to a few of her works being sold for tens of millions, and last March her painting Blanco y Verde reached 3.9 million dollars in an auction that Sotheby’s held in New York.
The oil painting, from between 1966 and 1967, far exceeded the very best expectations that placed its maximum price at 2.8 million dollars.
EFE, 
EFE
