Carmen Herrera Mural to Grace East Harlem - The New York Times

3 March 2020

Carmen Herrera is working with Publicolor and the students of Manhattan East School for Arts and Academics to produce a mural in East Harlem.

Soon you won’t have to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Modern Art to see artwork by Carmen Herrera. By the end of May, one of her abstract paintings will be visible from Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Upper Manhattan.

Publicolor, an arts and education nonprofit, announced on Tuesday that its students will create a large outdoor mural designed by Ms. Herrera at Manhattan East School for Arts and Academics, a middle school in East Harlem.

The mural, which will be titled “Uno Dos Tres,” is an adaptation of “Diagonal,” a painting by Ms. Herrera from 1987. The design, Ms. Herrera said in a statement, is a “variation on a theme,” not a re-creation of her earlier work. The new piece takes into account the specific features of the mural’s site and its location near the highway. “It needed something strong and bold and different to compete with all the visual noise,” she said.

Read more from Peter Libbey at The New York Times here.

Image: Carmen Herrera, working on her design for “Uno Dos Tres” at home in Manhattan. Photo by Tony Bechara.