Carmen Herrera’s time in Paris (1948-1954) was a catalyst for her shift from figuration to abstraction. This is where she was able to get a studio and spread her wings; to exit from the academic training she had initially received in Havana and later in New York; to bring together her training in painting, sculpture, and architecture and her multinational experience; and to discover her love of straight lines. Siete, painted in 1949, was executed during her early days there, when persistent shifts in style and technique indicate she undertook a deliberate experimentation with all things abstract, dabbling in biomorphic, gestural, and concrete abstraction, before her artistic vision crystallized, and she took the decidedly minimalist direction of constantly distilling her work. Along with Siete, the other extant paintings from 1949 reveal that she had embarked on a frenzied effort to forge a personal vocabulary. Siete illustrates this ambitious period of artistic transformation and reveals that despite some future meanderings, Herrera had already found her path as a painter. She was intensely conscious of who she was, what her gifts were, and what direction she should pursue.

Siete is one of her earliest mature works, prescient of what was to come. The composition is framed in a black oval whose segments appear to be both over and under the two red ovoid forms and the red corner of a rectangle that dangles over them. A vivid yellow form holds the composition together. Herrera works its intersecting lines, both horizontal and vertical, into an indivisible structure that plays optical games on the viewer as they reverberate and seem to both protrude and recede. The striking composition anticipates her leap into the fusion of form and color, her interplay of figure and ground, and her penchant for the use of strong, graphic colors. The fact that one of the ovoids is complete and the other fragmented, further generates a formal instability that will characterize many of Herrera’s future works. Siete is like a prologue to her emergence as a master of geometric abstraction whose investigations anticipated those of Op art and Minimalism.

Carmen Herrera’s time in Paris (1948-1954) was a catalyst for her shift from figuration to abstraction. This is where she was able to get a studio and spread her wings; to exit from the academic training she had initially received in Havana and later in New York; to bring together her training in painting, sculpture, and architecture and her multinational experience; and to discover her love of straight lines. Siete, painted in 1949, was executed during her early days there, when persistent shifts in style and technique indicate she undertook a deliberate experimentation with all things abstract, dabbling in biomorphic, gestural, and concrete abstraction, before her artistic vision crystallized, and she took the decidedly minimalist direction of constantly distilling her work. Along with Siete, the other extant paintings from 1949 reveal that she had embarked on a frenzied effort to forge a personal vocabulary. Siete illustrates this ambitious period of artistic transformation and reveals that despite some future meanderings, Herrera had already found her path as a painter. She was intensely conscious of who she was, what her gifts were, and what direction she should pursue.

Siete is one of her earliest mature works, prescient of what was to come. The composition is framed in a black oval whose segments appear to be both over and under the two red ovoid forms and the red corner of a rectangle that dangles over them. A vivid yellow form holds the composition together. Herrera works its intersecting lines, both horizontal and vertical, into an indivisible structure that plays optical games on the viewer as they reverberate and seem to both protrude and recede. The striking composition anticipates her leap into the fusion of form and color, her interplay of figure and ground, and her penchant for the use of strong, graphic colors. The fact that one of the ovoids is complete and the other fragmented, further generates a formal instability that will characterize many of Herrera’s future works. Siete is like a prologue to her emergence as a master of geometric abstraction whose investigations anticipated those of Op art and Minimalism.

Carmen Herrera’s time in Paris (1948-1954) was a catalyst for her shift from figuration to abstraction. This is where she was able to get a studio and spread her wings; to exit from the academic training she had initially received in Havana and later in New York; to bring together her training in painting, sculpture, and architecture and her multinational experience; and to discover her love of straight lines. Siete, painted in 1949, was executed during her early days there, when persistent shifts in style and technique indicate she undertook a deliberate experimentation with all things abstract, dabbling in biomorphic, gestural, and concrete abstraction, before her artistic vision crystallized, and she took the decidedly minimalist direction of constantly distilling her work. Along with Siete, the other extant paintings from 1949 reveal that she had embarked on a frenzied effort to forge a personal vocabulary. Siete illustrates this ambitious period of artistic transformation and reveals that despite some future meanderings, Herrera had already found her path as a painter. She was intensely conscious of who she was, what her gifts were, and what direction she should pursue.

Siete is one of her earliest mature works, prescient of what was to come. The composition is framed in a black oval whose segments appear to be both over and under the two red ovoid forms and the red corner of a rectangle that dangles over them. A vivid yellow form holds the composition together. Herrera works its intersecting lines, both horizontal and vertical, into an indivisible structure that plays optical games on the viewer as they reverberate and seem to both protrude and recede. The striking composition anticipates her leap into the fusion of form and color, her interplay of figure and ground, and her penchant for the use of strong, graphic colors. The fact that one of the ovoids is complete and the other fragmented, further generates a formal instability that will characterize many of Herrera’s future works. Siete is like a prologue to her emergence as a master of geometric abstraction whose investigations anticipated those of Op art and Minimalism.

Carmen Herrera’s time in Paris (1948-1954) was a catalyst for her shift from figuration to abstraction. This is where she was able to get a studio and spread her wings; to exit from the academic training she had initially received in Havana and later in New York; to bring together her training in painting, sculpture, and architecture and her multinational experience; and to discover her love of straight lines. Siete, painted in 1949, was executed during her early days there, when persistent shifts in style and technique indicate she undertook a deliberate experimentation with all things abstract, dabbling in biomorphic, gestural, and concrete abstraction, before her artistic vision crystallized, and she took the decidedly minimalist direction of constantly distilling her work. Along with Siete, the other extant paintings from 1949 reveal that she had embarked on a frenzied effort to forge a personal vocabulary. Siete illustrates this ambitious period of artistic transformation and reveals that despite some future meanderings, Herrera had already found her path as a painter. She was intensely conscious of who she was, what her gifts were, and what direction she should pursue.

Siete is one of her earliest mature works, prescient of what was to come. The composition is framed in a black oval whose segments appear to be both over and under the two red ovoid forms and the red corner of a rectangle that dangles over them. A vivid yellow form holds the composition together. Herrera works its intersecting lines, both horizontal and vertical, into an indivisible structure that plays optical games on the viewer as they reverberate and seem to both protrude and recede. The striking composition anticipates her leap into the fusion of form and color, her interplay of figure and ground, and her penchant for the use of strong, graphic colors. The fact that one of the ovoids is complete and the other fragmented, further generates a formal instability that will characterize many of Herrera’s future works. Siete is like a prologue to her emergence as a master of geometric abstraction whose investigations anticipated those of Op art and Minimalism.