Chucho Reyes
Chucho Reyes
(1880-1937)
José de Jesús Benjamín Buenaventura Reyes Ferreira alias "Chucho Reyes" was a born collector, who began treasuring and appreciating the rich collection of works that he had already received by inheritance: fantastic white and blue tibers of Chinese porcelain, hundreds of pieces of pre-Columbian ceramics from that rich region of Jalisco-Colima where he came from, as well as notably, the beautiful dogs with bulging belly and the typical round pot with parakeet legs. Reyes's is a sui generis case, since by tradition as well as by affiliation he developed the instinct of scuriosing, of wanting to know, which led him to discover art in all its genres, increasingly feeding his enormous taste for collecting. His house was saturated with pieces of all kinds, grouped not by their cost, their rarity or their origin, but simply by the personal aesthetic appreciation of Chucho, which he always enjoyed sharing through beautiful anecdotes and wise observations.
His passion for discovering and treasureing more objects would take Reyes every Sunday very early to the El Baratillo market in Guadalajara, and later to La Lagunilla in Mexico City, where he got beautiful pieces after negotiating insistently showing a cunning that even surpassed that of the wealthy German collector Franz Mayer, from whom he used to commonly win pieces. As a sample of his imaginative resources, let's remember that on more than one occasion he was announced in the national press as a collector traveler interested in the purchase of antiques.
Hosted with a false name in a hotel on Madero Street, bidders came to him with many pieces that he finally acquired or with which he simply delighted. In this way he came into contact with works of a very varied nature and origin to increase his already diverse collection: carousel horses (animal whose plasticity and elegance was also an important theme in his artistic reproduction); Olmec mirrors in reflective stones; refined crafts, civil and religious, in colonial silverware; frog-shaped scissors forged in 18th-century poblano iron, in addition to countless cachivaches and rare objects.
Thus, Reyes will shelter in his collection the same a popular toy bought from a street craftsman as replicas of famous diamonds, surely made in Belgium or France, for the quality and weight of the glass; he will equally appreciate a horse made in glass to the torque by some skilled craftsman unknown at some village fair, that beautiful and ancient pieces of sgraffi glass with "nugget" engravings. In this brief account, we cannot overlook some of the contributions of Reyes himself to his collection. I recently discovered, among papers and photographs that belonged to Chucho - and that kindly allowed me to study my collector friend Patricio Uribe Barroso, a great connoisseur of the life and work of Chucho Reyes -, a set of small crystals with touches of oil and chaquira that resemble tiny scenographies, the work of the overflowing creativity of our artist. This finding will undoubtedly add to its vast productive repertoire pieces of importance comparable to those that best express the imaginative cosmos of its inner world. Mention should be made of his animal figures, ingeniously built with wire and pieces of wallpaper, which lead me to remind me that one of Chucho's first works was that of rocket and manufacturer of those almost extinct cardboard characters, the Judas, which by tradition are burned during the festivities of Holy Week. One of them, a death of sticks and cardboard given by Diego Rivera, is preserved in my collection.
In his love for collecting what we commonly know as "craftsmansmans" - nothing derogatory word, if by it we understand what derives from art and leads to it, a living and vibrant manifestation of a true arts of the people -, Chucho Reyes also deployed his enormous creative genius, since appreciating the hands of God in the art of the people, paraphrasing Carlos Fuentes, is to unscray the veil that covers the original soul of objects, love their elementary beauty and discover the history they contain, elements that Chucho Reyes always knew how to pour into his dazzling work.
Source: Rodrigo Rivero-Lake, “El coleccionismo de Chucho Reyes" https://www.rodrigoriverolake.com/post/el-coleccionismo-de-chucho-reyes