Rufino Tamayo - SKETCHLINE

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1899 - 1991

Rufino Tamayo

description

A Mexican artist and monumentalist, graphic artist and sculptor, a vivid representative of the avant-garde, who worked in several new styles and promoted national traditions and culture by his work.

Rufino was a Zapotec Indian by blood, although he did not look like a purebred Indian. After the death of his mother, the boy was brought up by his aunt, in whose shop in Mexico City he helped to trade. In the future, the young artist had a predilection for “fruit” still lifes.

The master received many prestigious awards, his personal vernissages were held, except for Mexico, in the US and Europe. The museum of Rufino Tamayo was opened in the artist’s native city Oaxaca in the south of Mexico. In the capital of Mexico, there is the Museum-Gallery of R. Tamayo, to which the artist donated a large and very valuable collection of paintings by contemporary artists (Picasso, Braque, Leger, Bacon, etc.).

Key ideas:

– In the West, many art historians believe it was R. Tamayo, and not his contemporaries Rivera or Siqueiros, who was the most prominent Mexican artist. Only he was the ablest to “wash” the painting from the taints of different movements of fine art, excessive philosophizing – from all that is not painting itself. There was a miracle of a real talent: through mysterious and semi-abstract figures, through the unusual color gamut the reality came – a little strange, but extremely attractive emotionally.

– Due to his great originality, unique beauty based on the use of authentic national values, re-newed in a dialogue with the elements of the painting of avant-garde artists, the master achieved recognition of his style. R. Tamayo had the courage to declare the presence of a bright, accentuated national cultural heritage in paintings created both in the American and Parisian periods of work. And he was recognized and encouraged at first in foreign countries, and only then at home.

– Tamayo concretized his vision of the ethnos, introducing historical moments, folklore motifs into thematic canvases and fresco painting. While his contemporaries like Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco were in favor of art, coupled with political events and ideology, Tamayo focused on plastic forms, masterful use of colors and various textures.

– He emphasized the dualism inherent in the ancient Mexican worldview; Rufino Tamayo said about his method of using a limited number of colors, «As the number of colors that are used decreases, the number of opportunities for their compatibility increase”.

– He claimed that a smaller spread of the pallette gives the art of painting more power and actually increases the possibilities of the composition. Such unique color solutions are evident in the painting “Three Singers” (1981). In it, Tamayo uses pure red and purple colors – they reflect both emotion, content and national color. Rufino is often called the “artist of the Sun” – it is symbolical that Tamayo’s sculpture “In Honor of the Sun”, made by the master in 1980, became a business card of the city of Monterrey (the capital of the eastern state of Nuevo Leon in Mexico).

Rufino Tamayo

On Artist

flow

Expressionism

Cubism

friends

Пабло Пикассо

artists

Жорж Брак

Фернан Леже

Френсис Бэкон

By Artist

flow

Surrealism

Abstract Expressionism

friends

Элен Франкенталер

artists

Pedro Coronel

description

Mediums: oil, canvas. Location: private collection.

1990

description

Mediums: oil, canvas. Location: The Museum and gallery of Rufino Tamayo, Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City.

1978

description

Mediums: oil, canvas. Location: private collection.

1973

description

Mediums: oil, canvas. Location: private collection.

1944

description

Mediums: oil, canvas. Location: private collection.

1941

description

Mediums: oil, canvas. Location: private collection.

1940