Emma Reyes

Emma Reyes was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1919. She was an artist who distinguished herself as a painter and illustrator. She grew up in extreme poverty and ran away from the orphanage for girls where she was living at the age of nineteen. Independent, she travelled wherever she could and devoted most of her life to painting and drawing, and gradually her name became particularly well known. She formed friendships with some of the most distinguished artists, writers and intellectuals of the 20th century in Europe and Latin America. She lived in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Jerusalem, Washington and Rome, before settling in Paris in 1960. In 2003, the year of her death, the French government honoured her with the prestigious title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.