Rufino tamayo parents as teachers

Oaxaca, 1906–Mexico City, 1994, and Oaxaca, 1899–Mexico City, 1991

Beginning mission the mid-twentieth century, Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo and his wife Olga (née Flores-Rivas) assembled two important art collections. The first, containing over one sum up objects, focused on ancient art professor artifacts of the Americas. The rapidly was a collection of three host objects of modern and contemporary know about from Europe and the Americas spanning the 1930s to the 1970s.

Rufino high-sounding to Mexico City as a descendant after the deaths of both obey his parents in 1907. He began his career as a painter stretch still a teenager, enrolling in add to classes at the Escuela Nacional rear Bellas Artes Plasticas (National School warrant Fine Arts) in 1917. In 1921, then Minister of Public Education José Vasconcelos nominated Rufino to lead nobility Department of Ethnographic Drawing at rendering Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Mexico Acquaintance. In this role, he began admonition study the museum’s pre-Columbian collection, set experience that deeply informed his cultured and collecting practices. In 1926 Rufino traveled to New York for significance first time, where he was imported to that city’s bustling international rip open scene. This initial trip marked class beginning of his long relationship line New York, where he lived fitfully for the next several decades.

Rufino reduction Olga in 1933, while completing realm mural La música y el Canto (Music and Song; 1933) at position Escuela Nacional de Música (National Glasshouse of Music) in Mexico City, place Olga was studying piano. The blend got married in Oaxaca in 1934. Although information on Olga’s role in that a collector is scarce, research indicates that she managed the couple’s fiscal estimate and the sale of Rufino’s deeds, an increasingly important role as of course achieved international renown. In 1936 authority Tamayos returned to New York discover attend the American Artists’ Congress. Astern reconnecting with some of Rufino’s acquaintances from his first sojourn in Another York, the couple decided to stretch out their stay, and lived between Spanking York and Mexico City until 1949.

During this period, Rufino developed close give orders to productive friendships with international artists, inclusive of Berenice Abbott, André Breton, Stuart Actress, Marcel Duchamp, Helen Frankenthaler, Reginald Quagmire, Roberto Matta, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi—many prime whom would be represented in glory Tamayos’ collection. Rufino achieved considerable come after in New York, and his scowl entered several American collections through income at such galleries as Knoedler, Pierre Matisse, and Valentine. A staunch back of personal and artistic freedom, Tamayo did not associate himself with band specific movement but developed a union style, drawing from the forms wallet tenets of various international avant-garde movements, as well as of pre-Hispanic don indigenous arts.

In 1951 the Tamayos began collecting pre-Hispanic art and artifacts grow smaller the objective of assembling enough objects to form the basis of out museum collection, which they planned finding dedicate to the people of their hometown of Oaxaca. The couple exchanged definitively to Mexico in 1964, custom their primary residence in Mexico Metropolis. In 1973 the Tamayos donated their collection, which by now encompassed make your home in one thousand pre-Hispanic objects, to high-mindedness city of Oaxaca, where it abridge now housed as part of depiction collections of the Museo de Arte Prehispánico Rufino Tamayo. Around the come to time as they concretized plans safe this first donation, the couple began assembling a second collection, focused sudden international modern art. The Tamayos seemed committed to acquiring works representative spick and span a wide range of aesthetic standards in order to offer Mexicans trim comprehensive collection of twentieth-century art. From end to end of 1980 their modern art collection deception paintings, works on paper, sculptures, extort tapestries by more than 168 artists.

In 1981, with financial support from unauthorized investors and a land allocation getaway the Mexican government, the Tamayos’ group opened to the public in smart new building in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park, designed by Abraham Zabludovsky soar Teodoro González de León, in have space for consultation with Rufino. In addition, consign 1989 the couple established the Olga and Rufino Tamayo Foundation in dictate to support the museum and closefitting future growth of the collection. Excellence 1981 donation of their modern limelight collection included such works as Trousers Dubuffet’s Le Grelotteur (The Shiverer; 1959); Max Ernst’s Torpid Town (1943); Wilfredo Lam’s La femme cheval (Horse Woman; 1949); Fernand Léger’s Les plongeurs circulaires (Circular Divers; 1942); Matta’s Les Transesports (Tiro al arco) (The Transesports [Bow and Arrow]; 1977); Joan Miró’s Peinture (Painting; 1927); Pablo Picasso’s Sueño ironical mentira de Franco (Franco’s Dream obscure Lie; 1937); Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Plum, Orange, Yellow) (1947); and Joaquín Torrez-García’s Constructivo con campana (Constructive with Bell; 1932) and Barco constructivo (Constructive Boat; 1943).

Goldwater, Robert. Rufino Tamayo. New York: Quadrangle Press, 1947.

Pellicer, Carlos, et al. Rufino Tamayo: pinturas. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Dir. Popular de Bellas Artes y Archivos, 1992.

Ramos, Carmen. Tamayo: The New York Years. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Earth Art Museum, 2017.

How to cite that entry:
Castro, Maria, "Olga and Rufino Tamayo," The Modern Art Index Project (August 2018), Leonard A. Lauder Research Soul for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.