Emma Reyes

Reyes’ lush and colorful paintings, featuring human beings in harmony with nature, disavow an anthropocentric, Eurocentric worldview

A self-taught artist, Emma Reyes (1913–2003) made an impression on such luminaries as Lola Álvarez Bravo, Gabriel García Márquez, Frida Kahlo, André Lhote, Enrico Prampolini and Diego Rivera during her nomadic life. This first publication on her artwork is an introductory overview to the unique practice she developed from the mid-1940s to the early 2000s in Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Colombia and France. Her work can be associated with the aesthetics of 20th-century Magic Realism, adopting a formal vocabulary that combined elements of post-Cubist and pre-Columbian art. She drew on memories of her journeys across South America in the early 1940s to depict individuals set among lush vegetation. Featuring her signature spidery lines and colorful compositions, the human being and surrounding jungle are one, telling an ancestral story of kinship. Far from calling for a return to the wild, she aimed to reject the anthropocentric worldview and return humanity to its rightful place in dialogue with its environment.