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Almine Rech

Federico Herrero

“The work of Federico Herrero poses one of the more compelling challenges to the modernist notion of autonomy I have encountered in recent years. Borrowing the pictorial language of one of the most so-called committed perpetrators of autonomy –abstract expressionism– Hererro upends the tradition by if not forging, then demonstrating its link to the everyday.

For Hererro, painting is anything but removed from the quotidian, it is, on the contrary, quite indivisible from it. Where some might see it as the most unnatural form of art, the most isolated, and yoked to a kind of cultural elite, he sees it as the most natural thing after nature, quite literally saturating the world we live in. From the traffic divisions that demarcate our roads to surfaces of buildings and play grounds to even street signs themselves, painting is a simply a fact of the modern world. To claim otherwise is disingenuous. By the same token, to claim that it is insufficiently contemporary, irrelevant, somehow historical, and therefore anachronistic, is no less disingenuous. Indeed, for as Herrero and his work constantly remind us, we live surrounded by paint. To deny this is to deny the very world we live in.”

— Chris Sharp, curator and writer

Federico Herrero’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows, notably at Guggenheim Museum, New York, US, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, US, Museo de Arte Nacional de Costa Rica; 21st century art museum Kanazawa, Japan; Denver Art Museum, US; CAM Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, US.

Selected artworks

  • Federico Herrero, Landscape with Blue Mountain, 2023

    Federico Herrero Landscape with Blue Mountain, 2023

    Acrylic, oil, spray paint on canvas
    99.6 x 80 cm
    39 x 31 1/2 in

  • Federico Herrero, Letters and Sounds, 2023

    Federico Herrero Letters and Sounds, 2023

    Oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas
    69.8 x 80 cm
    27 1/2 x 31 1/2 in

Gallery exhibitions

Museum exhibitions