Tamayo: The New York Years

Tamayo: The New York Years November 3, 2017 – March 18, 2018

Rufino Tamayo’s lushly colored paintings portraying modern Mexican subjects earned him widespread acclaim as an artist who balanced universal themes with a local sensibility. Tamayo (1899-1991) was drawn to New York City in the early twentieth century at a time when unparalleled transatlantic cross-cultural exchange was taking place. While living in New York, intermittently from the late 1920s to 1949, Tamayo engaged with the new ideas expressed in the modern art that he saw in museums and galleries. Tamayo: The New York Years is the first exhibition to explore the influences between this major Mexican modernist and the American art world.

The exhibition brings together forty-two of Tamayo’s finest artworks and offers a unique opportunity to trace his artistic development—from his urban-themed paintings depicting the modern sights of the city to the dream-like canvases that show an artist eager to propel Mexican art in new directions. Tamayo, like many artists during this period, was deeply impressed by the art of Pablo Picasso, whose influence permeates the work of the avant-garde artists in Europe and the American modernists who followed. Tamayo’s approach to the figure became more fractured, schematic, and abstract as he internalized the lessons of Picasso’s art. Tamayo shared common interests with younger American artists including Jackson Pollock and Adolph Gottlieb, who were drawn to indigenous art, mythical themes, and increasingly non-representational imagery. These artists all grappled with the anxieties of World War II as well. Tamayo’s fierce and symbolic animal paintings and artworks evoking celestial themes from the 1940s are a special focus of the exhibition. As Tamayo’s stature rose in the mid-1940s, so did his following among artists and critics who supported a modern art movement centered in New York and the Americas rather than Europe. Tamayo: The New York Years shows Tamayo at the center of this shift in the history of twentieth-century art.

The exhibition is organized by E. Carmen Ramos, SAAM's deputy chief curator and curator of Latino art. A catalogue, written by Ramos, will accompany the show. Tamayo: The New York Years will travel to one additional venue. The exhibition is the latest in a series of projects at SAAM that illuminate the global nature of art.

Tamayo: The New York Years is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We are especially grateful to His Excellency Gerónimo Gutiérrez-Fernández, the Mexican Ambassador to the United States, for serving as the honorary patron for the exhibition. The Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, DC has provided invaluable advice and support. The Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center, provided major support.