JESUS CHUCHO REYES Gouache on Paper HORSE |
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 | Jesús Reyes Ferreira (Chucho Reyes) (1882-1977)Born in October of 1882 to Buenaventura Reyes y Zavala and dońa Felipa Ferreira Flores in Guadalajara Jalisco. He was said to be the Mexican Chagall (this was said by Marc Chagall himself on a trip to Mexico). His father was a collector and antique dealer but very strict with his son and Chucho barely finished his elementary education when he dropped out of school. Coming from a wealthy family he found it possible to study art as a silversmith apprentice. He learned about this trade and later on became a silversmith himself. Some of his designs are still in his nephew David´s private collection. He was also interested in woodworking and spent hours learning about carving and woodworking in nearby shops. This experience was undoubtedly necessary when he became an expert antique dealer.His first serious job was as a window dresser in a department store. In 1927, after his parents death, he takes up residence in Mexico City. Within a few months he becomes well known within the circles of artists. His work tries to promote the incorporation of folk art into mainstream culture. His main themes are roosters, circus folk, angels, skeletons, horses, flowers, and Christs. Picasso once said when seeing one of Chucho´s paintings "How refreshing! He must be a very young artist." Chucho was about to turn 60. His first individual exhibition was in 1967 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He died in Mexico City in 1977. There was an interesting article in Time Magazine on Oct 2 1944. Mexico's Chucho Mexico City's No. 1 doodler last week found himself the center of an artistic cult. Tall, wrinkled Chucho Reyes (pronounced Choocho Ray-ez) is a 58-year-old antique dealer and former art teacher who claims he knows nothing whatever about painting technique ("I don't paint, I just mess up paper"). U.S. tourists buy Reyes' bright, fantastic watercolors almost as fast as he turns them out. Chief U.S. collector is Beautician Helena Rubinstein, who owns over 100 doodles. There are two Reyes works in Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Chucho Reyes quickly covers big sheets of Chinese paper with whorls of screaming paint representing prancing horses (see cut), proud cocks, or wooden-faced little angels. To these images, Chucho sometimes adds impressions of Adam & Eve, fallen women or skeletons. All spring from Mexican folklore. Curious Course. Ten years ago Chucho Reyes set up a school in Guadalajara to train local children in painting, sculpture, bookbinding, glass blowing, dramatic writing, silver and tin work. Reyes himself knew nothing of these techniques, hired no teachers, ran the school in highly unacademic fashion. ("That is why they made such pretty things.") He stirred up his pupils by taking them to theaters, whorehouses, insane asylums, wakes, where they startled those present by climbing on chairs or stretching out on the floor to get a novel point of view. Out of this free-style approach came some spectacular work, part of it by artists now nationally known in Mexico. One outstanding Reyes graduate is the water-colorist and engraver, José Maria Servin. Chucho used to wrap his students' work in Chinese paper. He began to make careless doodles on the wrappers. These attracted the attention of Diego and Frida Rivera, who often liked the doodles on the wrapping better than the artistry inside. So Chucho tried marketing them, at 5 pesos ($1) apiece. Today Reyes' swooshing pictures bring 50 to 80 pesos in Mexico, as high as $50 in Manhattan. Chucho sometimes reinforces his doodling with paint splashes, animal footprints or droppings from his two pet doves. |