This exhibition at the Museo Cabañas offers a panoramic view of Jesús “Chucho” Reyes Ferreira’s extensive work in the history of Mexican art. It is divided into five thematic sections: Portraits of a Painter and Antiquarian, Color in Popular Art, Color in the Animal World, The Color of Spirituality and The Color of the Skull. A previous exhibition, Chucho Reyes. La fiesta del color [Chucho Reyes: A Festival of Color], was held at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in March 2018, but for this occasion, new works, other objects and some documents from the artist’s time were included.
José María Estrada, the outstanding 19th-century painter, José Guadalupe Posada, the popular engraver, and José Clemente Orozco, the painter of women and cabaret scenes, are the national artistic sources in Reyes Ferreira’s work, as well as Georges Rouault and Marc Chagall, two leading colorists. In the figures of clowns, harlequins and floral bouquets of the Tapatío, it is possible to trace the expressionist and fauvist affiliation of this self-taught artist, given his admiration for these two French painters.
Chucho Reyes is considered an example of aesthetics for artists such as Mathias Goeritz and Juan Soriano, and for architects such as Luis Barragán, who learned the use of color, light, shapes, materials and textures from their painter friend to incorporate them in their modern projects.
The exhibition traces the visual record and perhaps the modest ideals of the painter and antiquarian (who did not really consider himself an artist), who is alone in painting, sculpture, in the private sum of Mexican popular art that has accompanied him throughout his career and which has given him a prominent place in Mexican art.
Arturo López Rodríguez
Curator