Author Description

The exhibition curated by art historian Karen Cordero commemorates the 114th birth anniversary of painter Rufino Tamayo as well as celebrates the first year after the remodeling and enlargement of the museum building located in Mexico City's iconic park Bosque de Chapultepec. The exhibition presents a selection of works from Tamayo's early career, a 15 year period that represents the formation of his artistic identity, until now has been largely ignored and scarcely studied. A period which historically corresponds to the process of his post-revolutionary consolidating, Tamayo's work reveals interactions with various movements in Mexican art showing a selective appropriation of certain aspects of the European avant-garde, at the same time taking into account the context and specificity of Mexican culture. His experiments in different techniques such as painting, drawing and engraving on wood, and his exploration of formal, conceptual and thematic strategies. The exhibition includes more than 30 works by 20 contemporary artists and 66 works by Tamayo, including oil paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors and not a few books. The pieces come from 25 national and international collections. Many of these works by Tamayo are unpublished or have never been exhibited, as in the case of mosaic project constructed in 1922. The work "Nueva York desde la terraza" (New York from the terrace, 1937) is key within the exhibition, as it reflects the incipient Tamayo.