Rufino Arellanes Tamayo

Well-known Mexican painter and muralist Rufino Tamayo (1899–1991) lived in New York City in the 1940s and ’50s. This publication presents photographs focusing on the city skyline, nighttime views of Times Square, and the bridges, from that period of Tamayo’s life.

Rufino Arellanes Tamayo was a leading Modernist who brought Mexico international acclaim through his development of a new form of abstract figuration, that ultimately made him one of the most recognized and respected painters of the twentieth century. A Zapotecan Indian born in the state of Oaxaca in 1889, he was exposed as a young man to the cultural wealth of pre-Colombian Mexico while working as a draftsman at the National Museum of Archeology in Mexico City. While his contemporaries Siqueiros, Rivera and Orozco were advocating art with a message, often political, Tamayo's work focused on plastic forms integrated with a masterful use of colors and textures. Early in his creative life, Tamayo kept strict linear perspective, and later he explored Cubist issues, but in the end he created a style that was all his own, participating in the development of "Mixografia," a graphic technique used to obtain colored and textured three-dimensional printing on handmade paper. Published on the occasion of the first major U.S. exhibition of Tamayo's work in nearly 30 years, curated by Diana C. du Pont with Juan Carlos Pereda, Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted offers a comprehensive view of the artist's work throughout his life, accompanied by eight wide-ranging essays featuring fresh new readings from top scholars. This detailed study of Tamayo's creative methodology is the most complete book on the artist to be published in more than 10 years.

This bilingual (English-Spanish) catalogue raisonné of Rufino Tumayo's prints will reproduce in color every print--including xylographies, lithographies, silkscreens, artist's books and the late mixographies--ever made by the great Mexican artist. Tamayo made approximately 320 prints between 1925 and 1991. Many of them were made using different inks, and these ink colors are respected in the catalogue's printing; in several cases, the printing processes themselves will also be reproduced. Comprehensive and expert commentary is made on each print regarding print-run, workshop and publisher. This project has taken the Tamayo Museum and Foundation in Mexico City almost ten years of research to complete.