Miss Chaves, a sophisticated self-taught painter, fortunately does not suffer from that quaint condition of horror vacuii narration which many find to be the sole saving grace of primitives. Rather, hers is a clear-eyed, bright-hued, paper cut-out view of lively-shaped objects often set before a hard blue sky. While the sail boats and groups of nuns are more easily light hearted and decorative in intent, her limited still lifes possess the gay lapidary qualities of a surrealist “pietre dure”—the organization of a few brilliant bits of intarsia bounded by an architectural frame of forced and awkward perspective—in brittle, charming, and completely minor exercises.

—Fidel A. Danieli