In the paper we present a new approach to the image reconstruction problem based on evolution algorithms and cellular automata. Two-dimensional, nine state cellular automata with the Moore neighbourhood perform reconstruction of an image presenting a human face. Large space of automata rules is searched through efficiently by the genetic algorithm (GA), which finds a good quality rule. The experimental results show that the obtained rule allows to reconstruct an image with even 70% damaged pixels. Moreover, we show that the rule found in the genetic evolution process can be applied to the reconstruction of images of the same class but not presented during the evolutionary one.