By Hand. Jewelry and Painting 3. Architect Hereu

Francesc Hereu

Banyoles, 1946. He has been an architect since 1972.
He has always been interested in drawing and painting, disciplines he has practiced regularly since his youth, a fact that likely influenced his decision to pursue a career in architecture. As an architect, he has balanced his professional practice with painting and jewelry creation.

He believes that some principles governing architectural work are transferable to other disciplines where visual arts play a key role: compositional balance, color combinations, volumetric integration, textures and contrasts, light, etc. When skillfully combined, these elements can spark the process of creating a work of art.

This is how his creative process unfolds: he works with metal, cutting and bending it, hammering and soldering, filing and shaping it until it becomes a jewel that shines in the shadows—a minimalist sculpture with its own atmosphere. Fitted to the body, it ultimately finds the purpose it sought without knowing it.

His drawings feature energetic strokes on paper or cardboard, with erratic lines that, nonetheless, seem to suggest something not entirely familiar. Apparently random splashes of color fall upon these lines. Out of this emerges the “imminence of a revelation,” a mystery whose manifestation remains uncertain.

The layers of paint spread across the canvas: first a single color, then blues, golds, and blacks, counterbalanced by greens and purples that engage in an intense dialogue within an incredibly harmonious chromatic storm. Suddenly, a surprising, vaguely recognizable object seems poised to emerge. Perhaps Kandinsky would have been captivated.