Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art (Rufino Tamayo Museo de Arte Prehispanico de Mexico): Oaxaca City
Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art (Rufino Tamayo Museo de Arte Prehispanico de Mexico): Oaxaca City
Rufino Tamayo was born in the City of Oaxaca, on August 26, 1899. His real name is Rufino Arellanes Tamayo. He does not come from an artistic background since his father was an employee, his mother, homemaker. He was acolyte at the church where he directed choirs, leading some people to notice a slight religious vocation in him.
In this environment, his fondness and interest focused toward music, and his parents wished for him to become a priest and a musician. Of his musical inclination, however, all that survived was his fondness for almost unknown autochthonous melodies, later forming a good repertoire by singing them with the accompaniment of a guitar.
Tamayo’s parents sent him to Mexico City to study bookkeeping, but instead, and against his family wishes, he enrolled in the National Fine Arts School, the former San Carlos Academy. In order to support himself worked in the Museum of Archaeology, which was offered by Minister Vasconcelos, a fellow Oaxacan, who was fond of Tamayo. His aesthetic theories originated in that museum because of his contact with pre-Colombian artefacts and his great feeling for drawing and proportion came to life.
Tamayo stayed but a short time in the Academy. He abandoned it, displeased with government education, and decided to study on his own, exploring the different tendencies followed then by world artists.
He added to those world famous Tamayo colours -blue, red, green, pink, etc.- one more, the most admired, the most venerable, the whitest Tamayo, the white of his hair. At times, it seems most difficult to achieve since it has required effort, practice, criticism, numerous years conjugated with art and the philosophical synthesis of our values.
Tamayo intended to reach deep into Mexican ancestry, and at the Museum of Archaeology, he arrived at one of those original sources that have made Mexico, since time immemorial, a sui generis region in the world.
When it comes to Mexican painting or art, Rufino Tamayo, the artist from Oaxaca, appears at the forefront of artists of international projection and standing.
His most important murals are located in Mexico (frescos at the National Music Conservatory, 1933), and the United States, his residence from 1943 (frescos at the Smith College Library of Northampton, Massachusetts). Some of his most important canvasses include, “Animales” [Animals] (1943), Modern Art Museum in New York; “El Cantante” [The Singer] (1950), Modern Art Museum in Paris, the sleeping
musicians at the Modern Art Museum in Mexico entitled “Mujeres de Tehuantepec” [Women of Tehuantepec]. In 1950 he participated in the Biennial of Venice.
Tamayo, along with the disappeared Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros fulfils all germane characteristics of universal genius. He has been able to incorporate into his art the complete interpretative strength of his artistic qualities with precision, intuition, and feelings deeply rooted in Mexico. All of which have translated into honours from foreign critics, especially where Tamayo is revered for the interpretation through which he places his sincere nationalism before the eyes of the entire world. He was born Mexican, and continues to be Mexican throughout his work.
Rufino Tamayo, through his rigorous studies and discipline to acquire more and better knowledge of the difficult pictorial art, has achieved solid identity and complete independence of expression. Rufino Tamayo died at 92, on June 24, 1991.
He left an invaluable legacy in the City of Oaxaca: the Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art “Rufino Tamayo,” in addition to the seniors’ home, “Los Tamayo.” In Mexico City, a museum named after him houses the most important contemporary works in the world, gift from Tamayo to Mexico.
Some of Rufino Tamayo’s famous quotes and phrases include the following: “We are tragic people; we have always lived under pressure, and when you live like that, there is no reason to be happy.”
