After eight attempts, she succeeded in leaving Hungary on March 10, 1950. Arrested in Austria, in the British-occupied zone, she was imprisoned for two weeks in a camp from which she fled. She arrived in Paris on 25 June 1950, passing through Munich, Brussels and Lille, mostly on foot.

Judit Reigl soon met the Parisian surrealist group and in 1954, her first exhibition was organised at the Galerie de l'Étoile scellée. The preface to the catalogue is written by André Breton, who will reprint it in the 1965 edition of his book Le Surréalisme et la peinture (Surrealism and Painting).

From 1958 to 1965, she developed the series of Guano, failed canvases placed on the floor and on which Judit Reigl 'worked, walked, poured pictorial matter that flowed, soaked, crushed under [my] feet', thus bringing into play the 'objective chance' dear to Breton.

In 1966 she began a series of human torsos. Then from 1973, in the series entitled Déroulements, Judit Reigl poses a sober colour by walking along a vertical unstretched canvas. In 1983, she took part in the travelling exhibition Twenty years of art in France which, in addition to France, travelled through Germany and Italy. In 2004, the museum of Soissons (Oise) dedicated a retrospective to her.

Text courtesy Galerie Laurentin, Paris - Bruxelles.