American Fine Art Magazine

Smithsonia­n American Art Museum

The Smithsonia­n American Art Museum explores Mexican modernist Rufinotama­yo’s time in Newyork

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The Smithsonia­n American Art Museum explores Mexican modernist Rufinotama­yo’s time in Newyork

Through March 18

The early decades of the first half of the 20th century were a hotbed of artistic innovation, cross-cultural influences and the developmen­t of national artistic identities. In Mexico the great muralists Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), came through the Mexican Revolution of 1910.The manifesto of the Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors, of which they were part, states,“we repudiate the so-called easel painting and all the art of ultra-intellectu­al circles, because it is aristocrat­ic and we glorify the expression of Monumental Art because it is a public possession.” Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) was an easel painter. He painted murals but was more comfortabl­e at the easel. He said,“the easel is a laboratory, a field of experiment­ation without limitation­s and its limited surface covers all the potentiali­ties for an artist.” Later, he said,“i had difficulti­es with the muralists, to the point that they accused me of being a traitor to my country for not following their ways of thinking. But my only commitment is to painting.that doesn’t mean I don’t have personal political positions. But those positions aren’t reflected in my work. My work is painting.”

Tamayo was born in Oaxaca of Zapotec Indian lineage. He became head of the Department of Ethnograph­ic Drawing at the National Museum of Archeology in Mexico City in 1921.There he developed an interest in pre-columbian art and the deeper roots of Mexican history.

He wrote,“i am absolutely convinced that the only thing that gives painting validity are its plastic qualities and its poetry. Poetry is message, humanity, life, which give the plastic elements their reason for being. Painting is not literature, nor journalism, nor demagogy. Painting is, I repeat, the wonderful union of poetry, with its message, and the plastic qualities that are the vehicle for transmitti­ng it.” In September 1926, following a successful solo exhibition in Mexico City, he arrived in New

York City. Stephanie Stebich, director of the

Smithsonia­n American Art Museum, wr ites, “Once in New York, Tamayo reveled in the cross-cultural exchange that flourished there, visiting galleries and museums and meeting artists and intellectu­als from Europe and New York, as well as others from Mexico and Latin America.wherever he went he absorbed as much as he could, from works on the walls in exhibition­s to those on easels in studios. He saw paintings by Diegoveláz­quez and El Greco at the Metropolit­an Museum of Art and work by Henri Matisse at an exhibition in Brooklyn. Simultaneo­usly, artists working in and visiting New York—including Marcel Duchamp, Stuart Davis,yasuo Kuniyoshi, Berenice Abbott, Reginald Marsh and others— interacted with Tamayo and took in the visual vocabulary that he, along with Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera, brought to the United States.”

Tamayo:the New York Years is at the Smithsonia­n American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., through March 18. E. Carmen Ramos, the museum’s curator of Latino art and curator of the exhibition, writes,“[this] is the first exhibition to explore the contours and repercussi­ons of Tamayo’s New

York tenure. By carefully examining his artistic unfolding, associatio­ns and critical reception in the United States, the exhibition reveals the formative role the city played in shaping Tamayo’s vision of modern Mexican art, and that the circulatio­n of his art and ideas contribute­d to the cross-cultural milieu that transforme­d Newyork into a leading center of postwar avant-garde art.” Stebich notes,“ramos saw and pursued the opportunit­y to acquire Carnival (1936), a work that exemplifie­s the best of Tamayo’s creative vision.

The most complex of his Coney Island scenes, it features dramatic shifts in scale that entice the eye to linger on the dense, colorful compositio­n.”

Ramos writes in her catalog essay, “For Carnival,tamayo…turned his attention to Luna Park, an amusement park within Coney Island that was a quintessen­tial symbol of American modernity for many early twentiethc­entury Newyork artists.the cacophonou­s scene features circus performers, spectators, electric lamps and motifs drawn from the facade of the park entrance. Here, too,tamayo tackles a favorite subject of many Newyork-based artists, including his acquaintan­ce Reginald Marsh.”

She concludes her scholarly yet poetic essay,“tamayo’s Newyork story is a complex one that reveals how his immersion in the U.S. art world shaped his art and how in turn his presence had ripple effects in the broader art world, especially at the end of his Newyork tenure.the rising abstract expression­ists may not have emulated Tamayo’s style,” she continues,“but as they were beginning to assert a new direction in contempora­ry art, they (and their supporters) drew resolve from his prominent example as an American artist driven by aesthetic and not overt sociopolit­ical concerns. Influence, in other words, comes in many forms.

The Mexican impact on the art of the United States did not end with the muralists.tamayo absorbed the New York artistic scene, was transforme­d by it, and also helped redefine notions of the national across the Americas at a crucial time in history.”

 ??  ?? Smithsonia­n American Art Museum • F Street NW & 8th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20004 • t: (202) 633-1000 • www.americanar­t.si.edu
Smithsonia­n American Art Museum • F Street NW & 8th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20004 • t: (202) 633-1000 • www.americanar­t.si.edu
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 ??  ?? Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), The Pretty Girl [Niña bonita], 1937. Oil on canvas, 481⁄8 x 361⁄8 in. Private collection. © Tamayo Heirs/mexico/licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Image courtesy Colección Hemerográf­ica–archivo Tamayo, Museo Tamayo.
Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), The Pretty Girl [Niña bonita], 1937. Oil on canvas, 481⁄8 x 361⁄8 in. Private collection. © Tamayo Heirs/mexico/licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Image courtesy Colección Hemerográf­ica–archivo Tamayo, Museo Tamayo.

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