Rufino TamayoModern Mexican Art

Two Women in a Window

Rufino Tamayo was born in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1899. If he were alive today, he would be over 100 years old.

Tamayo’s parents died when he was only 12 years old. He went to Mexico City to live with his aunt. He began taking art classes there, but when his aunt found out, she was furious. She thought that art classes were a waste of time and money.

Tamayo loved art, though, and he continued to take his classes in secret.

Rufino Tamayo

Tamayo’s art is rooted in Mexican folk art. He painted using colors and themes that the Mexican people had been using for centuries.

At the same time, Tamayo was a modern artist. He was more interested in showing his thoughts and feelings through colors and forms than in creating an exact replica of what he could see.

He lived to be 91 years old. He came to be known as Mexico’s greatest living painter as well as one of modern art’s international masters.

Watermelon and Pears

Other artists in Mexico did not like Tamayo’s work. They thought that his art was not about important things and that his art reflected too much of Mexico’s past.

Tamayo got tired of living in Mexico where so many artists were criticizing him.

He moved to New York City and then to Paris.

Watermelon

In some of his work, Tamayo liked to experiment with using many shades of the same color in one painting.

Do you think that this painting would be better if it used a lot of different colors?

Do you think that this painting is interesting because it uses color in a way that is unexpected?

Women of Tehuantepec

When Tamayo was a child, he worked for his aunt at her fruit stand. This painting probably comes from his memories of that time in his life.

Here we see the mix between Tamayo’s Mexican cultural roots and the influence that modern art had on him. The subject matter here is clearly Mexican, but the way he created the painting is modern.

What do you see here that looks like modern art to you?

Man and Woman

Tamayo’s later art became more abstract. That means that his paintings started to look even less like what he could see with his eyes. The paintings began only to hint at what they were representing.

Abstract art is less about the actual thing in the painting than it is about colors, shapes, and lines.

Three PeopleWhat do you think this is a painting of?

•It’s a painting of three people. I know this for sure because of the title of the painting.•Can you see three people in this painting?

What do you think about the colors in this painting?

What do you think this painting is about?

What’s the most important thing in this painting?

True Story: This painting was stolen from its owners in Houston in 1986. One day in 2003, a lady was walking down the street in NYC and saw this on the street with someone’s trash. She loved the painting and took it out of the trash and back to her apartment. She suspected it was valuable but knew nothing about it. Over the next 4 years she did some research on the painting and finally discovered that it was a very valuable stolen painting. She returned the painting to the owners who sold it for over $1M. She got a $15,000 reward.

Three People

Art in Action!

Draw a picture of a piece of fruit using only two colors. Choose colors that are very similar to each other, like pink and red, orange and yellow, or blue and light blue.

Luna y Sol