Colombian artist Emma Reyes (Bogotá, 1919–Bordeaux, 2003) developed a unique painting and drawing practice from the mid-1940s to the early 2000s in Argentina, the United States, Mexico, Italy, Israel, Colombia, and France, where she eventually settled in 1960. Her work was included in the 2024 Venice Biennale and was the subject of a revelatory solo exhibition at MAMCO, Geneva, in Fall 2023. CAPC–Musée d’Art Contemporain in Bordeaux is dedicated a show to her most iconic series, the “Imaginary Portraits” and the “Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables,” in 2025.

A self-taught artist, Reyes frequented and made an impression on artists and writers such as Lola Álvarez Bravo, Gabriel García Márquez, Frida Kahlo, André Lhote, Enrico Prampolini, and Diego Rivera during her nomadic life. Her work can be associated with the aesthetics of 20th-century Latin American Magic Realism. She made an important contribution to the debates around modern anthropocentrism and Eurocentrism in art and her vision anticipated contemporary discussions around art and ecological concerns concerns—through her signature close-up portraits of fruits and flowers, and lush colorful paintings featuring human beings in harmony with nature.

In 1991, underlining her distinctively South American worldview, and true to her outspoken personality, she stated: “The important thing about my work is not whether it is good or bad, whether people like it or not, but that it has the authenticity of my geography. When people see it here in Europe, they immediately associate it with Latin America—the French exclaim: ‘Amazonia!’ My painting has the color, form, and baroque style of my roots.”

Photo Credit: Association Emma Reyes & Marcello Maggiori