Friends Film Club: Alison Klayman, ‘The 100 Years Show’
Wednesday 14 December 2016 7 - 9pm
The Sir Hugh Casson Room for Friends, The Keeper’s House, Royal Academy of Arts
£12. Includes welcome drink and popcorn.
Friends of the RA book first
Join us for a special screening of Alison Klayman’s film on Carmen Herrera, following the artist as she approaches her 100th birthday. We are delighted to welcome Lisson Gallery’s Ossian Ward who will introduce the film and speak to Friends about working with Herrera.
“Carmen Herrera is very possibly the oldest contemporary artist working today. What is extraordinary about Herrera is that ‘commercial success’ did not come until the early 2000s — after seven decades as an artist...” — Christie's, 2014
Herrara is a Cuban-American abstract painter who has been active since the 1950s, but sold her first paintings in 2004, aged 89. London’s The Observer called Herrera the “discovery of the decade,” and her work is now acknowledged as a precursor to many modernist styles: minimalism, geometric and modernist abstraction, and concrete painting. Central to Herrera’s work is a drive for formal simplicity and a striking sense of colour. She is now represented by Lisson Gallery and has exhibited at Tate, The Whitney and MOMA.
Although the market ignored her for decades, she was always supported by a steadfast love: her husband of 61 years, Jesse Loewenthal. Loewenthal, an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School, was described by author and colleague Frank McCourt as an old-world scholar in an "elegant, three piece suit, the gold watch chain looping across his waistcoat front". Herrera’s only regret is that he didn’t live to see her success.
From architecture studies in Cuba to New York's Art Students League to Le Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris, Herrara’s life has spanned continents and art movements and demonstrates a persistent devotion to her work. She was a pioneer and a peer of many male artists who received great recognition in their time. Her story is just one example of the many great artists whose accomplishments were overlooked because of their gender, ethnicity or nationality. The 100 Years Show demonstrates the power of artistic vision to sustain itself