Rafael Heredia Cuevas

For a long time his artistic output developed in a private sphere. In 2009 he decided to show his work publicly and began an exhibition career that has led him to take part in numerous solo and group shows in Spain. Among them, a particularly significant place is held by the retrospective Música callada (Silent Music), presented at the Francisco Hernández Museum of Contemporary Art in Vélez-Málaga, where more than three hundred paintings and sculptures were shown, offering a survey of his artistic career. His work has also been shown through galleries in the United Kingdom, Norway, France, Germany and North America.

Classical music is an essential reference in his creative thinking. In it Heredia finds a conception of beauty bound up with harmony, rhythm and proportion. The same search can be seen in his sculptures, where volumes establish precise relationships and empty space plays an active part in the composition.

Sculpture is now at the centre of his artistic production. His language is based on a constant refinement of form. Rafael Heredia removes the superfluous, simplifies lines and concentrates volumes until he reaches what he considers essential. In that reduction, the expressive power of the figure remains intact. The result is a sculpture of apparent simplicity whose construction demands knowledge of the craft, command of the material and a rigorous understanding of form.

This beauty of simplicity is one of the most recognisable features of his work. A gesture, the tilt of a body, an empty space or the tension between two volumes can hold the whole meaning of a piece. His figures convey serenity while keeping an inner tension that invites the eye to linger. Emotion is built into the sculptural construction itself.

A gesture, the tilt of a body, an empty space or the tension between two volumes can hold the whole meaning of a piece.

Dignity, motherhood, leadership and resilience are some of the themes his work explores. To them are added exile, the Mediterranean, the consequences of conflict, certain cultural figures and his reflection on bullfighting. Rafael Heredia approaches these themes from a personal perspective, leaving room for each viewer to build their own interpretation.

Most of his sculptures are unique pieces, made mainly in terracotta and stoneware, with patinated or lacquered finishes. Some models are exceptionally cast in bronze, corten steel or other materials in very limited, numbered and certified editions. The artist is personally involved in every stage of the making of his works: from conception and drawing to modelling, the definition of the volumes and their finish.

This direct relationship with the material allows Rafael Heredia Cuevas's work to be understood through one fundamental idea: form is born of craft. Behind every piece lies long experience devoted to observing, building and refining. His sculpture thus reaches an expression of its own, in which simplicity becomes a form of beauty.