Rufino Tamayo Modern Mexican Art

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Rufino TamayoModern Mexican Art
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Two Women in a Window
Rufino Tamayo

• Rufino Tamayo was born in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1899.
  If he were alive today, he would be over 100
  years old.
• Tamayos parents died when he was only 12 years
  old. He went to Mexico City to live with his
  aunt. He began taking art classes there, but
  when his aunt found out, she was furious. She
  thought that art classes were a waste of time and
  money.
• Tamayo loved art, though, and he continued to
  take his classes in secret.

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Watermelon and Pears
Tamayos art is rooted in Mexican folk art. He
painted using colors and themes that the Mexican
people had been using for centuries. At the
same time, Tamayo was a modern artist. He was
more interested in showing his thoughts and
feelings through colors and forms than in
creating an exact replica of what he could
see. He lived to be 91 years old. He came to be
known as Mexicos greatest living painter as well
as one of modern arts international masters.
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Watermelon

• Other artists in Mexico did not like Tamayos
  work. They thought that his art was not about
  important things and that his art reflected too
  much of Mexicos past.
• Tamayo got tired of living in Mexico where so
  many artists were criticizing him.
• He moved to New York City and then to Paris.

In some of his work, Tamayo liked to experiment
with using many shades of the same color in one
painting. Do you think that this painting would
be better if it used a lot of different
colors? Do you think that this painting is
interesting because it uses color in a way that
is unexpected?
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Women of Tehuantepec

• When Tamayo was a child, he worked for his aunt
  at her fruit stand. This painting probably comes
  from his memories of that time in his life.
• Here we see the mix between Tamayos Mexican
  cultural roots and the influence that modern art
  had on him. The subject matter here is clearly
  Mexican, but the way he created the painting is
  modern.
• What do you see here that looks like modern art
  to you?

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Man and Woman

• Tamayos later art became more abstract. That
  means that his paintings started to look even
  less like what he could see with his eyes. The
  paintings began only to hint at what they were
  representing.
• Abstract art is less about the actual thing in
  the painting than it is about colors, shapes, and
  lines.

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Three People

• What do you think this is a painting of?
• Its a painting of three people. I know this for
  sure because of the title of the painting.
• Can you see three people in this painting?
• What do you think about the colors in this
  painting?
• What do you think this painting is about?
• Whats the most important thing in this painting?

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Three People
True Story This painting was stolen from its
owners in Houston in 1986. One day in 2003, a
lady was walking down the street in NYC and saw
this on the street with someones trash. She
loved the painting and took it out of the trash
and back to her apartment. She suspected it was
valuable but knew nothing about it. Over the
next 4 years she did some research on the
painting and finally discovered that it was a
very valuable stolen painting. She returned the
painting to the owners who sold it for over 1M.
She got a 15,000 reward.
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Art in Action!
Luna y Sol

• Draw a picture of a piece of fruit using only two
  colors. Choose colors that are very similar to
  each other, like pink and red, orange and yellow,
  or blue and light blue.