[9][2] Like many other artists from the school, including his mother, Herrera worked painting murals, which was a popular form of patronage for Native art in the 1930s and 1940s.

[7][11] Of his own work, Herrera said: Klee sought to see the wonders of nature through the eyes of aborigines and children, and attempted to combine their freshness of vision with his own cultivated knowledge, [while] I attempted the reverse, bringing the innovations and intellectual constructs of modern art to bear on traditional Pueblo imagery.Herrera's work has been described as "coolly decorative", in contrast with his mother's "warmly natural" art.

[9] His synthesis of traditional Pueblo art, Studio School training, and engagement with modernism and abstract styles was influential on an entire generation of artists.

[11][7][13] His funeral service was at Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, and he is buried in Santa Fe National Cemetery.

[19] The exhibit highlighted the seminal influence both artists had on subsequent generations of painters and how both mother and son forged new paths which grew out of but also broke from tradition.

Curator W. Jackson Rushing III said of the exhibition, "It is my contention that Peña and Herrera were key figures in the development of modern art in the United States and that there is no satisfying explanation for their exclusion from surveys on the subject.

On the contrary, for several reasons, a critical examination of their aesthetic achievements and legacy reshapes our understanding of American modernism.

"[19] Herrera's work was part of Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2019–2021), a survey at the National Museum of the American Indian, and George Gustav Heye Center.