Aid Lea Herrera
(Puerto General San Martín, 1905 – Rosario, 1993)

He was born in the city of Puerto General San Martín (35 km from the city center of Rosario).

In 1940 she married the painter Juan Grela. They lived on Rondeau Boulevard 2015 (in Pueblo Alberdi, 6 km north of the city of Rosario. On August 13, 1941, her first and only child, Dante (who would become an important composer of orchestral and electroacoustic music), was born. ).
Her beginnings in the art world are linked to a visit to an exhibition that she attended with Grela when they were still dating. “”I didn’t know what he painted, he hadn’t told me yet and one day when we were dating he took me to see an exhibition where there was a painting of his about the war, I really liked it and since then I liked the painting and I loved it. what he did””1​.
From that moment Aid had a strong commitment to her husband’s career, while she also found there her own expressiveness, forging her own original work.
As soon as she married Grela, given her financial difficulties, Aid began to invent and make materials at home so that her husband could paint. This is how Grela himself related it: “” he made the paint with edible oil and lime colors; The supports were cardboard boxes, bags and old plywood that she prepared with glue and chalk; To draw, she replaced the expensive cardboard with papers to wrap sugar and noodles, which Haydée brought from the warehouse, which she then ironed to make them smoother; She drew with pencil and charcoal (charcoal she made by burning willow twigs), common ink, walnut, and yerba mate water. Parallel to oil painting and drawing, she also worked with tempera; Haydée prepared it with hot glue water and when painting I used an emulsion that Spilimbergo taught us in these promotions: one part egg yolk and another part water and mastic; with these materials she painted in those times “” 2. In addition, Aid prepared the fabrics and arranged the frames with paper mache moldings.

At night, when she was alone because her son was going to study and Grela was teaching her, her desire to paint led her to give brush strokes to the paintings that Grela had already started. According to photographic records of the time, Aid painted murals with her husband in the northern area of Rosario in the late 1950s. One of them, which can still be visited in the Arroyito neighborhood, was made in the house of Ana Mujica Herrera, her niece. The painting is signed by both and in it you can see a child, a house, a tree, a dog and flowers; also a girl, a cistern and pots with plants, all resolved in flat and simplified geometric figures.

From the same year in which these murals were made (1957), there is a work signed by “”Aid H””: it is a still life, with organic shapes and that shows the beginning of his own style and artistic journey.
In 1962 Aid she participated in a group exhibition and in 1963 she held her first solo exhibition 4. By 1967 she was already holding exhibitions in other galleries in Rosario and Santa Fe.