Tamayo: The New York Years

This is a Tamayo painting of a New York City skyline and a person looking at it through a telescope.

Tamayo: The New York Years is the first exhibition to explore the influences between this major Mexican modernist and the American art world.

Rufino Tamayos 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 and hemispheric cross-cultural exchange was taking place. Tamayo: The New York Years is the first exhibition to explore the influences between this major Mexican modernist and the American art world. It reveals how a Mexican artist forged a new path in the modern art of the Americas and contributed to New York’s dynamic cultural scene as the city was becoming a center of postwar art.

Description

The exhibition brings together forty-one of Tamayo’s finest artworks, including key loans from public and private collections in Mexico. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to trace his artistic development—from his urban-themed paintings depicting the modern sights of the city to the dream-like canvases that show an artist eager to propel Mexican art in new directions.

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. He, like many artists during this period, was deeply impressed by the art of Pablo Picasso, whose influence permeates the work of the European avant-garde and that of American modernists who followed. Tamayo’s approach to the figure became more fractured, schematic, and abstract as he internalized the lessons of Picasso’s art.

Tamayo shared common interests with younger American artists including Jackson Pollock and Adolph Gottlieb, who were drawn to indigenous art, mythical themes, and increasingly non-representational imagery. These artists all grappled with the anxieties of World War II as well. Tamayo’s fierce and symbolic animal paintings and artworks evoking celestial themes from the 1940s are a special focus of the exhibition. As Tamayo’s stature rose in the mid-1940s, so did his following among artists and critics who supported a modern art movement centered in New York and the Americas rather than Europe. Tamayo: The New York Years shows Tamayo at the center of this shift in the history of twentieth-century art.

The exhibition is organized by E. Carmen Ramos, SAAM's deputy chief curator and curator of Latino art. Tamayo: The New York Years is the latest in a series of projects at SAAM that situates the art of the United States in a global context.

Visiting Information

November 3, 2017 – March 182018
Open Daily, 11:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m
Free Admission

Publications

This is the cover of the "Tamayo: The New York Years" book displaying Rufino Tamayo's Carnival painting.
Tamayo: The New York Years
Tamayo: The New York Years explores the influences between Rufino Tamayo (1899–1991), a major Mexican modernist best known for his boldly colored, semiabstract paintings, and the American art world. It reveals how he forged a new path in the modern art of the Americas and contributed to New York’s dynamic cultural scene as the city was becoming a center of postwar art. 

Videos

Credit

Tamayo: The New York Years is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We are especially grateful to His Excellency Gerónimo Gutiérrez-Fernández, the Mexican Ambassador to the United States, for serving as the honorary patron for the exhibition. The Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, DC, has provided invaluable advice and support. The Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center, provided major support.

Additional generous contributions have been provided by The Honorable Aida Alvarez, Mrs. J. Todd Figi, the Robert S. Firestone Foundation, the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation, the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund, the Sara Roby Foundation, Sam Rose and Julie Walters, and the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Grant Program.

SAAM Stories

Oil on canvas of a New York skyline from a terrace.
12/01/2017

Carlos Chávez was Mexico’s most important composer of the twentieth century, as well as a conductor, theorist, educator, and founder of the Mexican Symphony Orchestra.

Gouache on paper of a carnival.
11/03/2017
New York City sparked Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's imagination during his early visits in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, Manhattan was a burgeoning new hub for the art world that welcomed artists from all over and supported cross-cultural exchanges. 
Tamayo
03/25/2016
E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino Art at SAAM is currently in Mexico to research her upcoming exhibition on the 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's lengthy residence and production in New York City, Tamayo: The New York Years.
A photograph of Carmen Ramos by Ross Whitaker
E. Carmen Ramos
Former Curator of Latinx Art
Blog Image 244 - Curator's Travel Journal: In Rufino Tamayo's Footsteps (2)
04/07/2016
E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino Art at SAAM is currently in Mexico to research her upcoming exhibition on the acclaimed 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's lengthy residence and production in New York City, Tamayo: The New York Years. This is Carmen's second post from Mexico. Stay tuned for more updates from the road. Read all of Carmen's notes from her research trip.
A photograph of Carmen Ramos by Ross Whitaker
E. Carmen Ramos
Former Curator of Latinx Art
Blog Image 239 - Curator's Travel Journal: In Rufino Tamayo's Footsteps (3)
04/14/2016
E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino Art at SAAM is currently in Mexico to research her upcoming exhibition on the acclaimed 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's lengthy residence and production in New York City, Tamayo: The New York Years. This is Carmen's third post from Mexico. Stay tuned for more updates from the road.
A photograph of Carmen Ramos by Ross Whitaker
E. Carmen Ramos
Former Curator of Latinx Art
Splash Image - Curator's Travel Journal: In Rufino Tamayo's Footsteps (4)
04/26/2016
E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino Art at SAAM was recently in Mexico to research her upcoming exhibition on the acclaimed 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's lengthy residence and production in New York City, Tamayo: The New York Years. This is the fourth in a series of posts Carmen scribed from the road. Stay tuned for more updates. Read all of Carmen's notes from her research trip.
A photograph of Carmen Ramos by Ross Whitaker
E. Carmen Ramos
Former Curator of Latinx Art
Splash Image - Curator's Travel Journal: In Rufino Tamayo's Footsteps (5)
E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino Art at SAAM was recently in Mexico to research her upcoming exhibition on the acclaimed 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's lengthy residence and production in New York City, Tamayo: The New York Years. This is the fifth in a series of posts Carmen scribed from the road. Stay tuned for more updates. Read all of Carmen's notes from her research trip.
A photograph of Carmen Ramos by Ross Whitaker
E. Carmen Ramos
Former Curator of Latinx Art
Splash Image - Curator's Travel Journal: In Rufino Tamayo's Footsteps (6)
06/06/2016
E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latino Art at SAAM, was recently in Mexico to research her upcoming exhibition on the acclaimed 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo’s lengthy residence and production in New York City. This is the sixth and final post Carmen scribed from the road. The exhibition Tamayo: The New York Years will open at SAAM November 3, 2017. Read all of Carmen's notes from her research trip.
A photograph of Carmen Ramos by Ross Whitaker
E. Carmen Ramos
Former Curator of Latinx Art

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Artists

Media - J0048185_1b.jpg - 89705
Rufino Tamayo
Mexican, born Oaxaca, Mexico 1899-died Mexico City, Mexico 1991, active USA 1935-ca.1953

Mexican painter and muralist, who was influenced by the European modernism of Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso as well as pre-Columbian art and Mexican folk art.