Carlos Terres, (Jose Carlos Hernandez Martin del Campo) was born and bred in Lagos de Moreno, an agricultural town, in the high mountains of eastern Jalisco, in 1950, during the governorship of Agustin Yanez, the year that the refurbishment of the downtown buildings of Guadalajara commenced. His father was Alfredo Hernandez Terres, an editor and journalist, and the founder of "La Provincia" newspaper. His mother was Maria Magdalena Martin del Campo, a self-taught painter and Carlos' first drawing teacher. His maternal grandmother was a painter of religious murals, in Mexico City.
In 1963, from Guadalajara, cauldron of cultural foment, sallied six well know and highly thought of artists, adepts at the arts of painting, color, sculpture, murals, design, dancing, and choreography, and professors of the Plastic Artes at the University of Guadalajara, to Lagos de Moreno, quiet and provincial, to start an art academy . By then orphaned by his mother, Carlos' father saw to it that he completed his K---12 studies, and that he attended the academy, where his artistic gifts were soon recognized. In 1967, Carlos left for the state capital for more formal studies at the University, under the same teachers. He finished the five-year course having absorbed the skills of his professors, his thesis, "My Experiences With the Mural."
Having graduated, he continued there as an assistant teacher for seven years (1971-1977), his disciplines: painting and sculpture. The small salary that he earned enabled him to marry his pupil, the beautiful Elvia Xochitl G. Valencia. During this period, people began comparing his awesome talent to the likes of Picasso, Diego Rivera, Degas, and Daumier. Eventually, the naming of a street after him in Benavente, Spain honored his work. City leaders baptized it, "Street of Mexican Sculptor and Painter: Carlos Terres." Ironically, he had to supplement his salary by moonlighting as a police officer.
In 1977, he executed a reconstituted marble, polychrome high relief sculpture, his first, which covered 1,850 square feet of wall space on a government building in Mexico City, at the corner of Insurgentes and Gomez Farias. It is a tall structure, and the work of course, needed various large pins and wires to hang the weight of the assembly from the wall. Terres fell from near the top, and on the way down, wounded his back, ripping skin and flesh. They drove him to the hospital, duly stitched him up, and gave him serum and vaccines. The doctors wanted him to stay at the hospital for two weeks, but two hours after the accident, while still in tremendous pain, he was again on the scaffold following the dictates of his "unbreakable aesthetic will."
Terres paints and sculpts in the European Academy style very well, and in that genre, he produces beauty and grace. Most of the work of this prolific artist is however, inspired by the pre-Hispanic art, and he accomplishes these pieces with the power and movement of a costumed dancer, all the while retaining a style distinctly his own; modernity and classicism made synergetic. Like an F1 hybrid, there is a dynamic quality to his work that one cannot find thru either one of its progenitors. He infuses Mayan and Aztec ideas into western realism. His sculpture "Cuauhtemoc" is Rodin's "Balzac", with a feathered headdress. Henry Moore used some of the same forms, but Terres' work is alive with rhythm and color, and passion.
A simple catalogue of his work goes on for pages, even if you only count work available to see in public places, and not exhibitions, nor the honorifics. His paintings, sculptures, and leaded glass windows are in installations in churches, city halls, libraries, and hotels all over Mexico: in Mexico D.F., in Toluca, State of Mexico, in Leon, Guanajuato, and in Chetemal, Quintana Roo.
Spain has his pieces in Madrid, Medina del Campo, Rioseco, University of Salamanca, Benavente, and in Elizondo, Valle de Vaztan.
In the United States, you can see his work: in California, especially the wonderful mural, at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, in the Yorba Linda Public Library and the Curtis Theater, in Brea, sister city of Lagos de Moreno, where he is "Artist in Residence," in San Diego, in Washington D.C., at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and in Irvine, Texas.
Probably the largest, easily viewable collections are in Jalisco, in his native Lagos de Moreno, in Guadalajara, Ojuelos, Zapopan, Ciudad Guzman, and Ixtlajuacan del Rio. Most accessible of all are probably the ones in Tequila, Jalisco, and a World Heritage site, where he has several sculptures that pay homage to the tequila industry. Next time you catch the train ride called the Tequila Special, take a walk on the wild side after you have sampled the firewater available on the tour, and see some of Carlos Terres work in the courtyard of the Jose Cuervo distillery.
There actually is a Terres sculpture at Lakeside. It is a seventeen-foot monochrome model of a woman cast in the artist's own cast Terreroca, her dress falling gracefully from her body, the whole rising from waves that simultaneously bring pottery to the shore. Her hair, pulled back into Terres' characteristic pitcher handle curve, suspended weightlessly, from her head at first, then falling to join the body again near her feet. You can see it by driving west from Ajijic passed the Japanese nursery, Vivero La Paz, and turning north toward the mountain at the large "EVENTOS" sign, up a long cobbled road, all the way to the top, to a place that will one day be rented for the "eventos," birthday, or baptism, or quincenera coming of age parties. The view of the lake itself is worth the drive.
