Women Artists

Work by Deborah Kass

. And. …….Work by Carmen Herrera

Do you make work with an audience in mind?

“I think you can if you want. If you’re interested in communicating, you must be interested in the people you’re communicating to. I actually believe art is about communication, and that the nature of the communication and the aim of the communication is up to you as the artist, but I think you want to engage an audience because you want to engage the world. Again, I don’t want to be prescriptive, but that’s certainly what I’m interested in: engaging with the world.” – Deborah Kass

“The bus — la guagua — always comes for those who wait.”

When did you decide you were an artist?

You don’t decide to be an artist, art gets inside of you. Before you know it you’re painting, before you know it you’re an artist. You’re so surprised. It’s like falling in love. Carmen Herrera

Read an interview with Carmen

The rise of the OWAs-older women artists who, little known for decades, are finally being recognised

It is significant, however, that the enthusiasm for neglected female talent extends beyond feminist territory. Now 97, Cuban-born, New York-based painter Carmen Herrera suffered serious discrimination during her earlier life as an artist.

Carmen Herrera is a Cuban painter, born in Havana, who has lived in New York since the mid-1950s and has recently seen her work recognized in international circles.

Herrera did not sell her first canvas until 2004, when she was 89, yet since then she has broken through the painterly ceiling to win the patronage of MoMA and Tate Modern and has joined Anish Kapoor, Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramović at London’s Lisson Gallery. A minimalist whose canvases are geometric distillations of form and color, Ms. Herrera is still not widely known among art historians. But she is increasingly considered an important figure by those who now study her “remarkably monumental, iconic paintings.

After a lifetime of anonymity, Carmen Herrera is suddenly one of the world’s most collectible living artists.

‘Since I am famous, my life is hell,’ grumbles Carmen Herrera, the 97-year-old Cuban artist.
‘I used to have a quiet life doing what I liked to do – which is painting.’
Herrera worked in obscurity for nearly seven decades; now her canvases fetch up to $50,000 (£30,000). ‘I was amazed when my first painting sold,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I still am amazed.’
Her work is now on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn in Washington and Tate Modern in London.

So if you wonder if you are too old to paint…stop wondering….you are not. As long as you are alive keep going and live your passion….

Herrera was asked, why straight lines fascinate her. She shivers with delight. ‘Ahhhh, it’s almost a physical thing. There is nothing I love more than to make a straight line. How can I explain it? It’s the beginning of all structures, really.’
And where does the line end? Herrera chuckles. ‘It doesn’t.’

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