Her gift for color intensifies her animist vision of nature, while her layers of strokes define space and stripe volume like lush embroidery. Long overlooked or undervalued, the work of Emma Reyes – the painter born in Bogotá in 1919 and who died in Bordeaux in 2003 – is now gaining visibility within international institutions.

Although she associated and collaborated with leading artists and intellectuals – including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Enrico Prampolini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gabriel García Márquez, Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante – through a life marked by migration from Bogotá to Buenos Aires, from Mexico City to Paris (where she arrived in 1947 on a scholarship to study at the Académie André-Lhote) and Rome, this flamboyant artist largely escaped institutional recognition.

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