About

Claudia Herce Pagliai is a Spanish artist with Uruguayan and Italian roots that lives in Baselland (Switzerland).

She is a self-taught sculptor and artist that learned from books and videos of other artists at work.  Claudia started sculpting in 2018 and was captivated by the feeling of creating life from something so primitive as earth, by creating order and beauty from chaos. Passionate about the representation of the human form, she belives that, every person if looked at with real 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 in 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 in unconsciously, and as the work develops and takes shape, she discovers what she really needs to say.

Once her sculptures are modeled, Claudia fires them in an electrical 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.