Emma Reyes: Naturaleza muerta resucitando

Crèvecœur presents the first solo exhibition in the gallery dedicated to Emma Reyes (1919–2003), a singular Colombian artist whose work, long overlooked, is now receiving renewed attention. The exhibition unfolds across the gallery’s three spaces, including 5 rue de Beaune — a historically resonant site where Reyes held a solo exhibition in 1967, when it housed Galerie Suzanne de Coninck. On view is a selection of emblematic works alongside archival documents, spanning nearly five decades of creation.

Born in Bogotá to a prominent father and an Indigenous mother from Boyacá, Reyes spent her childhood in a Catholic orphanage, where embroidery was imposed on the young girls. Though she later abandoned the medium, its repetitive gestures and structural logic remained latent in her painting, acting as a symbolic thread in her artistic vocabulary. Self-taught, she developed her own techniques, constructing a body of work that stands apart from academic and modernist traditions.

Reyes’s trajectory was one of constant movement: from Bogotá to Buenos Aires, Paris, Mexico City, Périgueux, and Rome. She engaged with diverse artistic communities, building connections with figures such as André Lhote, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Enrico Prampolini, and Alberto Moravia. Her work is rooted in intimate memory, hybrid cultural imaginaries, and a profound dialogue with the living world.

Her pictorial compositions — lush surfaces, vegetal forms, chimeric figures — blur the boundaries between body, nature, and myth. In series such as Imaginary Portraits and Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables, she envisioned counter-images to the Western canon, informed by Indigenous references, rural iconographies, and anticolonial thought.

This rediscovery of Reyes takes place in a moment of growing institutional recognition: a monographic exhibition at MAMCO Geneva in 2023, the publication of her monograph with JRP Editions, and upcoming presentations in 2025 at CAPC Bordeaux and the Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie du Périgord. With this exhibition, Crèvecœur reaffirms her rightful place in the history of modern and contemporary art.