Jesús Reyes Ferreira

Jesús Reyes Ferreira (1880-1977), born José de Jesús Benjamín Buenaventura de los Reyes y Ferreira and also known as Chucho Reyes, was a self-taught artist and antiques/art collector and vendor. Reyes Ferreira began painting on crêpe paper, a delicate material not meant to last, as a way of decorating paper meant to wrap sales from his antiques/art store. The decorated paper became popular enough to be sold on its own. Although he began this activity in Guadalajara, he did not produce the bulk of his work until after he moved to Mexico City when he was 58 years old. Here he continued collecting and selling objects such as colonial art and Mexican handcrafts and folk art, being one of the early exponents for the appreciation of these objects. He also spent several hours a day painting. His work was first exhibited in 1950 with his first individual exhibition in 1967 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes after a half century of painting. As a self-taught painter, his works are relatively simple and often are dismissed as folk painting but they were and his aesthetics were praised by famous artists and architects at the time.

Life Reyes Ferreira was born on October 17, 1880, in Guadalajara to Buenaventura Reyes y Zavala and Felipa Ferreira Flores. His childhood home was on Morelos Street in Guadalajara, a typical house for the area, with a central courtyard, rooms connected by halls lined with railings and flowerpots. Today the structure is the Museo de los Títeres or Marionette Museum. His family was cultured and his father was eccentric and very strict. He was initially homeschooled by his father, but completed primary school at the Liceo de Varones, where he took art classes.

After primary school he worked at a number of jobs. He started as general help but then moved onto creating displays and decorating the store’s windows. From there he began to become known for the decoration of event spaces such as rental halls and churches for events such as weddings and baptisms for wealthy families. He began drawing and painting on the crepe paper used to wrap purchases from his store, these drawings became popular and soon clients were buying the paper for its own sake. As an antiques vender in Guadalajara, he began painting the crepe paper used for wrapping sales just as a way to decorate it.

His works have simple lines with a naïve quality, but also with bold colors. It shows influence from Mexican folk art, colonial art and pre Hispanic art as well as popular architecture. The images he painted include roosters, circus acts, angels, skeletons, horses and flowers. There is influence from traditional handcrafts in the depictions of toys. His depictions were not always traditional and included dolls dressed as prostitutes. He was religious which led him to paint images of Christ and the Virgin Mary as well as monks, saints, Adam and Eve, cherubs, angels and devils. He also painted images of dead girls with a sense of Christian piety depicting them as angels.

His work has been described as Surrealist, and his use of reduced forms described as Expressionist. His images use bold colors which stray from their forms.

He was self-taught, never accepting the title of “painter.” He claimed that he did not paint but rather “cover in mud” or “smear colors.” However, his work impressed others. Reyes Ferreira met Marc Chagall when the latter came to Mexico for a performance of the Aleko Ballet. Reyes Ferreira went to the Palacio de Bellas Artes to give some of his paintings to the Russian, which he humbly called “papers.” Chagall was impressed with the work, calling Reyes Ferreiro the “Mexican Chagall.” On one occasion Picasso remarked about his work that it was fresh and it must be from a young artist, when Reyes Ferreira was 70. Carlos Monsiváis called his work “a song of happiness.”

Reyes Ferreira’s two main influences were José Clemente Orozco, also from Guadalajara and José Guadalupe Posada, as can be seen with images of skulls with flowers. Unlike these two, his work was not social criticism. His images are based on popular and folk art but without obvious effort to promote Mexican identity such as was the case with Mexican muralism even though Reyes Ferreira admired Orozco. He influenced a number of architects in color schemes such as Luis Barragan, Mathias Goeritz, Max Cetto, Juan Sordo Madaleno and Ricardo Legorreta . He was admired by many architects and others for his sense of aesthetics although his wilder ideas were not or could not be executed.

There has been no systematic or in-depth study of his work. One reason for this is that for many years, art critics dismissed his art as folk painting, with his activities as a collector and antiques dealer considered more important. Although part of a number of museum collections, they are generally not on display or in museum catalogs of the most important Mexican museums such as MUNAL or the Museo de Arte Moderno. The Fundación Luis Barragán holds 194 of his works which were either sold or given to the architect. Despite the lack of museum attention, the works have been frequently forged.