Rufino Tamayo

RUFINO TAMAYO (Oaxaca de Juárez, 1899 - Mexico City, 1991)
"Dog", 1973.
Lithograph, copy 20/50.
Bibliography / references: -Web of the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City: Los perros de Tamayo.
-Website of the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City: Cedulario. -Web of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de México.
Signed and numbered.
Measurements: 55,5 x 75,5 cm.

Rufino Tamayo condenses in this lithograph one of the most recognizable motifs of his imaginary: the animal figure turned into a primitive, resounding and deeply expressive sign. The dog is represented in profile, with its mouth open, its body black and compact, its tail taut and its limbs reduced to an essential structure. The image dispenses with any anecdotal detail to concentrate on the symbolic strength of the silhouette.

The composition stands out for the contrast between the dark mass of the animal and the gray background, with its vibrant and atmospheric texture. This opposition between figure and space gives the work a powerful visual intensity. The dog is not presented as a domestic animal, but as an archaic, almost mythical presence, linked to the night, to the scream and to an instinctive energy.

The work reflects the maturity of Tamayo's language, characterized by formal synthesis, the power of the visual material and a restrained but intense expressiveness. Because of its graphic strength and its link to one of the artist's central motifs, it is a particularly representative piece of his work on paper.

Rufino Tamayo studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Mexico City and in 1926 held his first solo exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery in New York. His international projection was consolidated after the Venice Biennial of 1950 and was recognized with awards such as the Grand Prize for Painting at the II Biennial of São Paulo in 1953, the Calouste Gulbenkian Prize of the Institute of Arts of Paris in 1969 and the French Legion of Honor in 1970. In 1974 he founded the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art in Oaxaca and in 1981 he donated his international art collection, the origin of the Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City.

His work is represented in institutions such as the Museo de Arte Moderno de México, the MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, among others.