The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Carmen Herrera, minimalist artist who found fame late in life, dies at 106

“There is nothing I love more than to make a straight line,” said artist Carmen Herrera, shown here circa 1959. (Jesse Loewenthal)
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Carmen Herrera was 106 when she died on Feb. 12 in the loft in Manhattan where she had worked for more than half a century, creating a lifetime’s worth of abstract art that went almost entirely overlooked until her life was nearly over.

Ms. Herrera, who was born in Cuba in 1915 and trained in Paris in the aftermath of World War II, anticipated the artistic movement known as minimalism with her use of straight lines and geometric shapes. She exhibited her works occasionally over the years but did not sell her first painting until 2004, when a show at the Latin Collector gallery in New York helped propel her to sudden renown.