In the manner of a detective investigation, the author of this book, Sandra Gaete, goes in search of the traces of Héctor Herrera, a prominent textile artist, painter and draftsman who, due to his obsessive vocation for creating works with birds, was baptized by Neruda as El Pajarero. One of his tapestries was part of the UNCTAD III art collection, which was restored and recovered in 2023.
From his childhood in Tomé in the 1930s, until his death in Santiago in 2007, the text covers the life of an original, independent and authentic creator, to the point of being admired by Nemesio Antúnez, Mario Carreño and Pablo Burchard. In addition to making the tapestry for the UNCTAD III building in 1972, Herrera exhibited at The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, together with the engraver Santos Chávez in 1969; at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and at the São Paulo Biennial in 1975.
This work is structured around a written and a visual story, where Herrera's personal documents and photographs of his life are interspersed, with the description of the process of heritage recovery and interviews with those who knew the artist. At the same time, Sandra Gaete revives, through prose rich in images, the rise of popular art in Chile—with the plastic arts fairs organized starting in the 1960s in Parque Forestal—and invites us to reflect not only on the artistic quality of El Pajarero, but on the challenges posed by heritage rescue, the permanent tension between art and crafts, and the need to recover from oblivion those creators who contributed to delineating the landscape and identity of our country.
Publisher: Hueders
Apr 22, 2026
Wed—7 p.m.
BiblioGAM (Edificio A, piso 3)
Free, first come, first served.
Limited spaces.
