Footnotes

Provenance
Lisson Gallery, London.
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2013.

Exhibited
Milan, Lisson Gallery, Carmen Herrera: Works on Paper 2010-2012, 25 January - 15 March 2013 (illustrated on the cover).



Carmen Herrera's commitment to geometric abstraction and formal purity defined her artistic practice for over seven decades. A master of precision, balance, and chromatic contrast, she continually refined her visual language, paring compositions down to their essential elements. Untitled from 2012 is a striking example of the artist's ability to imbue her seemingly simple compositions with dynamism, adding tension to colour and line to make them pulsate and vibrate on the picture plane. Here, two green trapezoid elements move along the paper's diagonal axis, expanding and diverging towards the edges of the pencilled frame and touching at the centre, forever bound in a constant push and pull.

Throughout her career, Herrera embraced a meticulous process of design and execution: her works on paper integral to her precise methodology. She would begin with careful pencil sketches on tracing paper, methodically working through spatial relationships and colour pairings before executing them in a larger format. Some of these compositions later evolved into large-scale canvases or even sculptural works in her celebrated Estructuras series.

The artist's unwavering commitment to technique and her belief in the power of structure and the expressive potential of pure form link her to key movements in modernist abstraction, from Concrete Art to Minimalism, yet her work remains distinctly her own — imbued with a rigorous yet poetic sensibility.

Sidelined by the artistic cannon throughout the majority of her career, Herrera received widespread acclaim later in life, but remained steadfast in her pursuit of an uncompromising artistic vision. Reflecting on her approach, she once stated, "I began a lifelong process of purification, of taking away what isn't essential." ("Carmen Herrera: Paintings on Paper." Lisson Gallery. www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/carmen-herrera-paintings-on-paper). Untitled perfectly encapsulates the mastery and refinement of a consummate master of her craft and affirms Herrera's extraordinary legacy in the history of abstraction.