Smithsonian American Art Museum
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.
Rufino Tamayo, New York seen from the Terrace [Nueva York desde la terraza], 1937, oil on canvas, 20 3/8 x 34 3/8 in. FEMSA Collection. © Tamayo Heirs/Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo by Roberto Ortiz
