CINTAS FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES THE 2010 CINTAS FOUNDATION VISUAL ARTS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD TO CARMEN HERRERA

The Cintas Foundation announced today it will present the 2010 Cintas Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts to Carmen Herrera.

The 95 year-old Cuban painter Carmen Herrera was awarded the Cintas Foundation Fellowship two times early in her career, in 1966 and  then in 1968. . Founded in 1963, the Cintas Foundation awards fellowships annually to creative artists of Cuban lineage who reside outside of Cuba. The program has honored some of the world’s most talented Cuban artists.

Born in Havana in 1915, Herrera studied painting and art history at the Marymount School in Paris from 1929 to 1930.  In 1939, she married Jesse Loewenthal, a literature professor in New York.  They were married for 62 years and lived in New York and Paris before settling in New York in 1952 where she currently resides.  As a woman painting in New York in the 50’s and 60’s, she did not receive the kind of public attention and publicity she deserved in an art world in which women had few opportunities to exhibit and male artists predominated. Despite the visionary nature of her work and her association with artists of great reputation and influence, including Barnett Newman and Leon Polk Smith, her paintings were seldom exhibited. However, recent acquisitions of her work by MoMA and El Museo del Barrio, New York; Tate Modern, London and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC reveal a well-deserved recognition of the paintings she has consistently produced throughout her life.

“Carmen is a painter of exceptional talent and it is exciting to see her receive the long overdue recognition she deserves. The Cintas Foundation recognized her potential early on and it is right and fitting to acknowledge a lifetime of achievement now,” said Olga Viso, Director of the Walker Art Center and Board Member of the Cintas Foundation.

At the heart of Herrera’s work is a striking formal simplicity and attention to color.  Works are organized based on the harmony and tension of opposing chromatic planes, combining symmetry and asymmetry as a means to give structure to the surface.  Reducing her work to a play between two colors, Herrera creates an experience of sophisticated intensity. Her retrospective exhibition opened in September 2009 at IKON Gallery, a not-for-profit space in Birmingham, England.  The exhibition will travel to the Phalzgallerie Museum in Germany and open on January 22nd, 2010.

About the Cintas Foundation
The Cintas Foundation was established with funds from the estate of the late Oscar B. Cintas (b. Sagua La Grande, Cuba 1887- d. La Habana 1957), a former Cuban ambassador to the United States, a prominent industrialist and patron of the arts.  Since 1963, the Cintas Foundation has awarded more than 300 fellowships to artists of Cuban lineage who reside outside of Cuba.  www.cintasfoundation.org

About the Frost Art Museum – Florida International University

Over 27,000 people have visited The Frost Art Museum since the new building’s November 2008 opening. The Frost is an AAM accredited museum and Smithsonian affiliate. The museum is located at 10975 SW 17thSt across from the Blue garage and adjacent to the Wertheim Performing Arts Center on the University Park campus. Its hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday noon-5 p.m. The Frost is closed on Mondays and most legal holidays. For more information, please visit http://thefrost.fiu.edu or call 305-348-2890.

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