Carmen Herrera has been described as a “quiet warrior of her art” in her uncompromising commitment to abstraction over decades of scant recognition.⁽¹⁾ Born in Havana in 1915, she later moved to New York and then, in 1948, to Paris, where her leap to a pure form of abstraction was inspired by the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, a society dedicated to the exhibition of abstract art.  

Although she painted steadily after settling in New York in 1954, her work was marginalized, a story, unfortunately, all too familiar for many women artists of her generation. Only recently has her important position in the history of geometric abstraction in the Americas been widely recognized, a testament not just to her fearless integrity and relentless focus, but to how the questions she has explored for much of her career—the expressive possibilities of color and abstraction—remain, in her hands, fertile and vital.  

Herrera works in color and shape, driven by a quest for formal simplicity and a love of line. Two of her works in the museum’s collection, on view at The Alfond Inn through Summer 2024 and pictured below, are consummate examples. Read more about Herrera here and on the Rollins Museum of Art’s Collection page .

⁽¹⁾ Julián Zugazagoitia quoted in Deborah Sontag, “At 94, She’s the Hot New Thing in Painting,” New York Times, December 19, 2009.