Claudia Herce Pagliai: Spain
Claudia Herce Pagliai is a Spanish artist with Uruguayan and Italian roots that lives in Switzerland since 2008.
She is a pharmacist by training but has always been attracted to art. She paints in her free time (watercolors, oils, acrylic) and only started sculpting at the end of 2018. Since then, it has become her passion.
Claudia is a self-taught sculptor and artist that learned from books and videos of other artists at work. Passionate about the representation of the human form, she was captivated by the feeling of creating life from something so primitive as earth, by creating order and beauty from chaos. In her opinion, every person, if it is looked at with genuine interest and empathy, is beautiful regardless of age, gender, race and status. When sculpting, her goal is to represent realistically the anatomical side of the model (real or imaginary), as well as to capture its soul. She tries to look beyond the façade, expressing fears, wounds, longings, joys, struggles, anxieties, life experiences.
Claudia has specialized in realistic portrait sculpture. When not working on a portrait, most frequently behind her works, there is an emotion which mobilizes or ignites her to start a new project. It is a need to express. Sometimes it happens unconsciously, and as the work develops and takes shape, she discovers what she really needs to say.
Once her sculptures are modelled, Claudia fires them in an electric oven at 1200°C or using the traditional Japanese Raku technique. For her, Raku firing is always a very intense and exciting experience. It is necessary to be organized and controlled, but, at the same time, she has to accept the unpredictability of the method and let go. She likes to think that this ancient technique, apart from creating one of a kind-off pieces, helps to materialize in her sculptures the spiritual experiences of human lives that she intends to represent.
She is a pharmacist by training but has always been attracted to art. She paints in her free time (watercolors, oils, acrylic) and only started sculpting at the end of 2018. Since then, it has become her passion.
Claudia is a self-taught sculptor and artist that learned from books and videos of other artists at work. Passionate about the representation of the human form, she was captivated by the feeling of creating life from something so primitive as earth, by creating order and beauty from chaos. In her opinion, every person, if it is looked at with genuine interest and empathy, is beautiful regardless of age, gender, race and status. When sculpting, her goal is to represent realistically the anatomical side of the model (real or imaginary), as well as to capture its soul. She tries to look beyond the façade, expressing fears, wounds, longings, joys, struggles, anxieties, life experiences.
Claudia has specialized in realistic portrait sculpture. When not working on a portrait, most frequently behind her works, there is an emotion which mobilizes or ignites her to start a new project. It is a need to express. Sometimes it happens unconsciously, and as the work develops and takes shape, she discovers what she really needs to say.
Once her sculptures are modelled, Claudia fires them in an electric oven at 1200°C or using the traditional Japanese Raku technique. For her, Raku firing is always a very intense and exciting experience. It is necessary to be organized and controlled, but, at the same time, she has to accept the unpredictability of the method and let go. She likes to think that this ancient technique, apart from creating one of a kind-off pieces, helps to materialize in her sculptures the spiritual experiences of human lives that she intends to represent.
