Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"The vibrant colors and expressiveness of the brush stokes in Sandia (from Mueres) make it one of Tamayo’s most praised paintings. Tamayo uses his expert color knowledge to create lithographs that contain all of the notable characteristics of his paintings. In this work, three watermelons, all of unique form, are shown suspended in air in front of a backdrop of red, gray and green. The background looks primitive and almost reminiscent of a cave painting. Tamayo’s upbringing as a Zapotec Indian growing up in Oaxaca, Mexico could have been an influence on this work. Another possible influence could have been his interaction with pre-Colombian art while working at the Archaeology Museum in Mexico City early in his twenties.
Watermelons as a subject matter are very prevalent in the span of Tamayo’s works as well as for many other Latin American artists. Tamayo’s lithograph print Mujer con Sandia (1950) is another example of a work that proudly displays a watermelon as the focal point of the work. As an important fruit to Mexico, Tamayo sought to imply Mexican identity through ideas, rather than through easily understood murals similar to the works of other Mexican artists that were being produced at the time. His muralist counterparts created works that depicted the social problems that the poor workers, farmers and Indians endured at the hands of the aristocracy and the atrocities that came from the extravagant fighting of the Mexican Revolution. However, this did not appeal to Tamayo, who did not believe in creating works of that nature. Instead Tamayo sought to create works that did not focus on subject matter but focused on the pure elements of painting, like form and color. This focus on formal elements coined the name “pure painting”. Most of Tamayo’s works are filled with deep and sensual colors that go against the stereotypical “Mexican” colors that are bright and happy tones. Tamayo lets the color speak for itself and his works generally consist of very simple and limited subject matter.
Tamayo’s desire to stray away from the muralists and pursue an art form of his own showed the dedication and passion to art that would allow him to become one of the most internationally acclaimed Mexican artists of the 20th century.
Elyse Strand
References:
Corredor-Matheos, Jose. Tamayo. New York: Rizzoli, 1987.
Dorantes, Nicolas. “Recent Mexican Painting.” The Kenyon Review 2, No. 3 (1940): 296-308.
Sullivan, Edward J. “Rufino Tamayo. Mexico City.” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 130, No. 1023 (June, 1988): 493-494
"Label Type
Mystery MondayLabel
Hello from Purdue Galleries. We hope you are enjoying the last day of July and are counting down the days for the new academic year. Did you know that July is National Watermelon Month? Today’s work pulls from our amazing collection of 20th century Mexican Mural Movement artists. Can you name this artist who spent his youth working in the fruit stalls of Mexico City?
The answer is Rufino del Carmen Arellanes Tamayo (1899-1991). Tamayo was born in Oaxaca de Juárez to a shoemaker and seamstress. After his mother’s untimely death when he was eleven, he moved to Mexico City to live with his aunt who ran a fruit stall. Fruit, especially watermelons, would be a theme Tamayo returned to in his art throughout his career.
When he was a young adult Tamayo studied art at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, San Carlo (National School of Fine Arts), but was quickly disillusioned with European influenced academic painting and instead ended up in the orbit of other contemporary Mexican artists searching for a unique national art style such as Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), and David Alfaro Sisqueiros (1896-1974) though he avoided the pro-Revolution messaging found in his contemporaries’ work. Rather than focus on social issues, Tamayo wanted to depict color and form, a stance that eventually forced him to move to New York City after being branded a traitor by some members of the Revolution. He mostly lived abroad until 1964 despite his continuing popularity in his home country.
Tamayo’s art style can be classified as figurative abstraction. Unlike true abstraction, viewers can identify figures and forms such as the three, thick slices of watermelon seen here, but they have been reduced to blocks of color and simplified forms. Tamayo was deeply influenced by European modernist painters such as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and George Braque (1882-1963). He melded that aesthetic with visual references to Pre-Columbian art, which he avidly collected, to create a style that reflected his own heritage.
Today Tamayo is mostly known for his prints including developing a type of lithograph in 1973 with printer Taller de Grafica Mexicana called Mixografia that mimics the heavy painted surfaces of his paintings. Purdue Galleries is lucky to have six works on paper by Tamayo in our permanent collection representing four decades of his art career. This work was donated in 2000 by Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr. the inaugural director for Purdue University’s Global Policy Research Institute and emeritus head of the Nuclear Engineering department.
Artist: Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), Mexican
Title: Sandía No. 1 (Watermelon No. 1)
Date: 1969
Medium: ink on paper
Technique: lithograph
Accession number: 2000.24.05