Chus Burés, the Catalan jewelry master, explains that if you went to visit Carmen Herrera at noon, she would welcome you with champagne. If it was in the afternoon, he would take out the bottle of whiskey.
Once he asked him: “Is this the secret of his longevity?”.
Herrera, a Cuban from the United States with Santander roots, died in February in New York, less than three months before she turned 107. He worked as an underground artist, in the sense that he was one of the greats of geometric abstraction and modernism, although his recognition did not arrive until the 21st century. He didn’t sell his first well-selling painting, as a star, until he was 89.
Burés (Barcelona, ??1964) explains that this more than unfair ostracism was because in the 1950s art was completely dominated by men, and then, already in the 1970s, the fashion of currents such as pop took hold.
But in the end an exhibition at the Whitney in New York brought her out of oblivion and earned her the status of being one of the greats.
The Barcelona artist, who in the Madrid of the movement emerged resplendent with his jewels, especially with the hook pin from the film Matador that Pedro Almodóvar released in 1986, speaks with true reverence of Herrera, whom met in 2010 and with whom he cooperated.
One of the fruits of this relationship is part of the exhibition of 25 of his jewels (until May 18, 2024), at the library of the Society of the Americas, in Manhattan.
After El Dorado, an exhibition at the New York headquarters of this organization that explored the myth of the city of gold from the pre-Hispanic period to the contemporary era, now emerges as a cherry Burés and his Art as an ornament , title of this project that reflects his collaboration with several Latin American artists.
In addition to Herrera, these alliances with the master jeweler include Tony Bechara (Puerto Rican), the Argentines Julio Le Parc, César Paternosto, Marie Orensanz, Antonio Asis and Horacio García Rossi, the Brazilians Macaparana and Sérvulo Esmeraldo and the Cuban Kcho, who, according to Burés, has disappeared from the map of success after being sold to Castroism.
On the tour with this diary, he explains each of his pieces of jewelery (bracelets, pendants, necklaces), which he defines as “small sculptures”. Although he trained as an interior designer, a jeweler friend asked him for help and changed course. He had always been fascinated by how African tribes used jewels, why they wore them on one arm or another, their symbolism. He saw that in this area he could combine his passion for design and his interest in art. But the trigger was his work with Louise Bourgeois, another artist crowned at a mature age.
This exhibition, he clarifies, is only a brief glance at the part of his work in which the importance of this collaboration is highlighted for him. This allows him to develop “the most experimental part of his work”, he emphasizes. “It’s the area where I have the most fun,” he adds. He assures that, if someone goes there and hands him a drawing to make a piece of jewelry, “he tells him to go to a workshop”, he remarks.
Because all of theirs arise from conversations with these artists and their desire to give a physical form to the dialogues. It is a way to obtain unconventional results and explore avenues of creativity.
He says that a designer tends to have a more industrial vision, he has to think “in production, in weight, that a piece of jewelery can be worn and is affordable”, he insists. “All these parameters of the industry do not exist when you work with an artist”, he remarked. “I am very stimulated – he clarifies – to develop pieces without these factors, with different dimensions”.
