Arturo Herrera (1959)

Arturo Herrera

Arturo Herrera is a Venezuelan-born American and German painter, graphic artist and sculptor who has lived and worked in Berlin since 2003.

Herrera came to the United States in 1978, studied art at the University of Tulsa, traveled in Europe, and attended graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In New York, he began collecting coloring books, comic books, and illustrated fairy tales. In the early 1990s, he became known for his extensive works in various collage techniques. Herrera seems to weave fragments of found recognizable images into collages.

Herrera's oeuvre includes works on paper, paintings, reliefs, sculptures, public art and books. In the late 1990s, the artist began creating wall sculptures out of felt: cut pieces of material are suspended, creating colorful "blobs". The resulting images often balance between abstraction and figuration, with echoes of 1950s-1960s Pop Art and early 20th century Surrealism, Art Nouveau, lyrical abstraction and Cubist collage.