In strange ways, art constantly reminds man of his greatness and fragility; it reminds him of these qualities above all by offering him the spectacle

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1 In strange ways, art constantly reminds man of his greatness and fragility; it reminds him of these qualities above all by offering him the spectacle of an unfettered imagination, of boundless search, of creation free from extraneous rules. Rufino Tamayo

2 About the Exhibition Rufino Tamayo was an artist, collector and educator of great importance for modern and contemporary culture both in Mexico and abroad. His work stands out for its constant search for contemporary techniques and expressions through the mediums of painting, graphic arts, sculpture, and drawing, which he used to develop a language of shapes and colors that were simultaneously modern and unique. In his work, freedom goes hand in hand with the meaning of the present to reconcile apparently contradictory terms such as figurative art and modern art in a non-descriptive realism; intelligence and sensitivity; Mexicanism and internationalism; individual man and universal humanity. In the context of the Museo Tamayo s reopening, after the period of expansion and renovation works, the retrospective Tamayo/ Trajectories exhibition of paintings shows the artist s contributions to the field of modern painting over seven decades ( ): from participating in the historic European vanguards until acquiring his unique artistic identity. The exhibition shows of his paintings, some being exhibited for the first time and others rarely seen before by the public. The themes follow the various paths taken by Tamayo through the classic genres of the history of art: still-lifes, female nudes, portraits and landscapes. Tamayo/Trajectories also includes paintings that reflect Mexicans daily lives in response to the Mexican School of Painting, a dominant movement in that postrevolutionary era when artistic and political debate raged over what it meant to be Mexican. The works on display also show how the artist participated in the historic European vanguards, specifically in surrealism.

3 Town, Oil on canvas. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco, California. Gift of the estate of Victoria Corwin Christenson 23 and J. Baxter Christenson 23.

4 Far from exoticism, the section Images of Mexico gives Tamayo s perspective on traditional scenes of daily life in 1920s Mexico, as well as the intimacy and character of their protagonists. Surrealism(s) is a section that focuses on Tamayo s first unique and defined artistic expression in which symbolic, fantastic, unconscious and dreamlike elements move to the fore. The works in the series Still Life construct a dialogue with international art and represent inanimate objects fruit, household utensils, and metaphoric objects set within a specific space and related to cultural progress in the twentieth century. The Female Nude group of paintings are sensuous volumes of women s bodies with undefined facial features; the innovative bodily forms allude to certain traits of pre-hispanic sculpture and popular art. His Portraits mainly reflect the personality of Olga the artist s wife, muse and companion. Tamayo s variety of styles are on display in the Landscape paintings, with scenes that range from the rural to the celestial, and include everything from abstract scenes and dreamscapes to characteristic Mexican geographical settings. Finally, Figures reflect the complexity of man s humanity, each work referring to the multiple facets of human beings emotional, spiritual, aesthetical and existential dimension. The exhibition has two chapters. The first one is opening from August to November, 2012, and the second will be presented from December, 2012 to March, 2013.

5 Still Life with Pumpkin and Sugar Canes, Oil on canvas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art.

6 Concepts Historic Vanguards: a term used in history of art to describe the group of artistic movements such as cubism or futurism which appeared in various European countries during the first half of the twentieth century. These movements employed a wide range of artistic media and approaches, but they shared a rejection of the merely mimetic imitation of reality, and required a more participative and attentive audience. Surrealism: an artistic and literary movement born in France in around 1920 as one of the historic vanguards. Its concepts were influenced by Sigmund Freud s psychoanalytical theories and inspired creatively by dreams, irrationality, the unconscious, and randomness. The surrealists visual experimentation was very productive. Members of this group included André Breton, Luis Buñuel and many others. Mexican School of Painting: not a school as such, but a term used to describe the artistic movement that took place in Mexico roughly between 1921 and Without any particular defining aspects, the school encompassed muralists as well as painters, draftsmen and sculptors who began to produce artworks after the end of the Mexican Revolution hence the strong influence of nationalism, interest in popularism and left-wing ideology. Its leading figures included David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Doctor Atl and Pablo O Higgins.

7 Venus Emerging from her Bath, Oil and sand on canvas. Private collection.

8 About Rufino Tamayo Tamayo was born on August 25, 1899, in the historic center of Oaxaca city. He died aged 92 in Mexico City in When he was still a boy, his father abandoned the family and shortly afterwards, in 1907, he became a maternal orphan; he was then looked after by his aunt Amalia, with whom he moved to Mexico City. His artistic training began in the Academia de San Carlos in 1917, but two years later he decided to do independent research and experimentation. In parallel he held administrative posts and worked hard in the field of education. Tamayo s appearance on the cultural scenes in New York and Paris, and later in Mexico City, soon opened up new horizons unconnected to Mexican Government. He produced 22 murals, as well as a large number of easel paintings. He also helped renew contemporary graphic arts. The curator of Tamayo/Trajectories, Juan Carlos Pereda, points out that although his illustration work is the least well-known, the Oaxacan artist also produced breathtakingly beautiful and original artworks, giving images to the written word. The painter was also a distinguished philanthropist, evidenced by the opening of the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and the donation of two old-people s homes in the cities of Oaxaca and Cuernavaca.

9 Rufino Tamayo by Irving Penn for Vogue magazine, 1947.

10 Educational Notes Did you know that apart from collecting international contemporary art Rufino Tamayo collected pre-hispanic art, and that in 1974 the Museo Rufino Tamayo de Arte Prehispánico was inaugurated with 1300 artworks collected and donated by the artist? During the eighties, Rufino Tamayo, together with Luis Remba, founder of the Taller de Gráfica Mexicana, invented a new printing technique known as mixografía, a system that produced prints with depth, volume and texture never created before by a printing process. In 1970 Max Pol Fouchet produced the film Tamayo and in 1973 H. Cokin, the film La vida artística de Rufino Tamayo, with music by Carlos Chávez and a presentation by Octavio Paz. Do you think that artistic genres such as still-life painting and the figures in the exhibition constitute ways of seeing that we normally do not notice in our daily lives? If you were given the task of suggesting a current and international symbol of Mexican identity, what would you choose? How do we convert the perspective of a fragment of geographic, urban, celestial territory into a landscape? Is the human gaze enough to transform it?

11 Visit the Museo Tamayo s Documentation Center to consult: alba, Víctor. Coloquios de Coyoacán con Rufino Tamayo. Oaxaca, Calamus, pp. du pont, Diana C. (ed.). Tamayo reinterpretado. México, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Fundación Olga y Rufino Tamayo, Turner, pp. paz, Octavio, Jacques Lassaigne. Rufino Tamayo. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2da. Edición actualizada, Exhibition s Workshop Entre dualidades (Between Dualities) Workshop designed by artist Paola de Anda Open to the general public Free with museum ticket Place: Sala educative August to November, 2012 Time: Tuesday to Friday 10 am to 2 pm Saturday and Sunday 12pm to 4pm (the workshop lasts between 30 to 40 minutes)

12 Credits Curators Juan Carlos Pereda Adriana Domínguez Education Mónica Amieva Paola de Anda Museography Rodolfo García Design Lídice Jiménez Registrar María Marines Liliana Martínez Documentation Center Enrique Arriaga Editor Arely Ramírez Moyao Communication Amanda Echeverría Beatriz Cortés Pilar Altamirano Front: Woman Calling Birds, Oil on canvas. Private collection.