Artist Birthday: Arturo Herrera (US, born 1959 Venezuela)

Arturo Herrera’s work includes collage, works on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting, photography, and felt wall hangings. His work taps into the viewer’s unconscious—often intertwining fragments of cartoon characters with abstract shapes and partially obscured images that evoke memory and recollection.(Art21) His work is indicative of the strong presence there is in contemporary international art of artists from South and Central America.

Artist Birthday for 27 May: Arturo Herrera (born 1959, us born Venezuela)

Arturo Herrera, Untitled, 2003, paint on paper diptych, height: 152.4 cm   Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY, © 2026 Arturo Herrera  (AK-142)

Like songs played by different musicians, none of Herrera's paintings are ever presented the same way twice. This perspective is increased when paintings such as this are installed in a variety of different spaces. Like his felt strip installations, these paintings imitate the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). The abstract shapes seem capable of dripping and forming endless different combinations and shapes. Untitled is misleading when the viewer realizes that under the Pollock-like drips, are disjointed images from the Disney movies.

Background 

Since the turn of the millennium, the word "global" is increasingly used to designated the state of art. Instead of most world cultures being narrowly defined by region and national borders, cultural ideas are exchanged easily from one part of the world to another. Enriching this exchange is the emergence, in post-colonial countries, of exploration through art of national, gender, and social self-perception.

There is a tension between the perception that such globalization is long overdue in a world where nationalism spawned countless wars, and the fear that the phenomenon could level cultural difference to the point where some cultures would be consumed entirely by stronger entities. Artists have not ignored either of these scenarios. The themes that appear the most in contemporary art are questions of identity and ethnicity, gender, and faith in terms of how they define human beings.

Venezuelan art, like that of many of the former Spanish colonies in South America, was dominated by political and military/historical themes after the country gained independence for once and for all from Spain (1830). Academic realism dominated Venezuelan art until the 1930s, when many Venezuelan artists who had studied abroad introduced modern European movements such as Dada, Surrealism, and Cubism.

Arturo Herrera, born in Caracas, obtained a BA from University of Tulsa, and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives and works in Berlin and New York. His major works include photography, collage, installation, and painting. His work, which emphasizes the subconscious reaction of the viewer connected to his abstract imagery, comes through Surrealism with the added influence of Cubist collage.
  
Temporary painting and sculptural installations in architecture have always utilized the tension between existing permanent structure and the fleeting aspect of the painted image. Herrera believes that such works as this address visual imagery in the same way as a person listens to a song -- the experience is fleeting and then over, unless the song is played again.