This painting is a Hecht, by Claudia Murillo
Claudia Hecht already has a legacy for humanity: she is the creator of the new sculpictoric art, a technique that meticulously expresses beings brought over from a native past, using organic materials in a mix with gold patinas to give a live and mysterious aspect.
But a few years ago, the course of her life gave no clue as to a career as a paintress. She was a classic ballet dancer and Olympic gymnast and on top of that she studied a BA in Business Administration with specialty in Marketing, which has nothing to do with her present activity.
But an accident changed the course of her life, when she hurt herself during a dance routine and not being able to dance anymore she began a search for a new mode of expression.
“My soul is in music and dance, but for some reason God didn´t want me to be a dancer”, Claudia says. It was also thanks to those divine plans that on an occasion when she needed to give a birthday gift she decided to make it herself originating her first painting, which drove her to follow this path.
But Claudia wanted to do something that was completely of her own creation, so she began experimenting, the fruit of that work brought forth her first gilded glass piece, and other pieces came about on stone, metal, and even brick.
Claudia states that she has different lines of work: erotic, modern and abstract and another that looks to rescue in some way the national culture, specially from the pre Columbine era in a very Hecht version.
This is how unlike the majority of artists that begin to show their gifts from an early age, Claudia began her pictoric period after having finished her BA. “I don´t have studies in Fine Arts, I could almost say that I am self taught, although I did take some courses and I went for a time to learn with artists, referring to the classes she took with the italian Giulio D´Arobio and other renowned local artists such as Tony Guerra.
I remember that a great painter form Guadalajara, Alejandro Colunga, told me many years ago: “You know Claudia, this art profession is a resistance race”. “In those moments I didn´t understand”, says Claudia. And that is because in those moments she understood resistance as having to work many hours in a row, but as she delved more in the field of arts, she realized he meant there were many things that you had to put up with.
I don´t want to talk about other professionals, but just as you meet many very nice people, there are others who would try to trip you over, and this one must recognize. Plus there is the problem that there are practically no scholarships to study these disciplines, such as painting and photography. “I thought, what is happening?”, Claudia says, “there are no scholarships or financial support from the banks, as a matter of fact it isn´t something even being contemplated, and I think this is a big mistake”.
“And this is because supposedly people that devote themselves to art don´t need financial backing”, she continues, “and I don´t know why they assume this so easily; truly the first painting I made was precisely because I didn´t have money” she adds laughing. “One lives from art, one has to eat, pay the phone and pay for gasoline”.
On the other hand there is the competition in a state that Claudia describes as a tremendous breeding ground of talent; “there is much talent in Jalisco, so it´s not the same to compete where there is almost nothing as when there is a lot”.
But even with these problems that beset the artists in general, she has prevailed thanks to a combination of constancy with hard work and the support she has received from authorities. Every beginning is very difficult, she expresses, one must knock on doors and see which one opens and which don´t and she says this truly conscious for she doesn´t have a manager as she is hyperactive and looks for her own opportunities.
As a typical Capricornio when something comes into her mind she persists until she succeeds: “I think that when you like something and you have the will to devote yourself to it... well, you do it. We can all do what we like to do, adjusting to your possibilities and truly with work and persistence you can achieve everything”.
Thanks to that philosophy, Claudia has summed up 17 exhibitions, seven of them individually, where audiences have been able to appreciate art that evidences very exacting and meticulous work, from where running bulls, exotic wizards and sensual essences come forth.
When she paints she settles in her workshop with her materials and a recorder, as music inspires and somewhat guides her hands that can make sculptures and canvases of all sizes, even murals.
Her next step is to cross borders, she has received much impulse in the United States, because her style seems so novel and different from other trends and even a television network has requested pieces of her work.
But Claudia´s main purpose is to contribute with her grain of sand to humanity, to represent Mexico in the world by virtue of the technique created by her, “I wouldn´t like to come and go and not do anything”. And to think that other members of her family were the ones that had been immersed in painting! Claudia Hecht has already inscribed her name in the annals of art.