Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991)

Valentine Gallery, New York
The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John de Menil, Houston, Texas
Acquired from the above by the present owner

New York, Valentine Gallery, Tamayo Recent Paintings, January 7-26, 1946, no. 10
Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Tamayo: 20 años de su labor pictórica, June-September, 1948, no. 41, illustrated 
Venice, XXV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia, June-September, 1950, no. 49, p. 361
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Tamayo, April 4-May 6, 1954, no. 2
New York, The American Federation of Arts, Seventeen American Collectors, October 1959-May 1960, no. 31
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, May 18-August 12, 1979, no. 33, illustrated
Mexico City, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Rufino Tamayo: 70 años de creación, December 1987-March 1988, illustrated in color
Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, February 17-May 27, 2007; Miami, Miami Art Museum, June 22-September 16, 2007; Mexico City, Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, October 26, 2007-January 21, 2008; Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted, p. 304, discussed, p. 29, p. 324, illustrated in color

Ben Wolf, "Tamayo of Mexico Exhibits Massive Forms," Art Digest, January 15, 1946, illustrated
"4 to Lead Off '46: Rufino Tamayo at the Height of his Powers," Art News, New York, January, 1946, discussed 
Robert Goldwater, Rufino Tamayo, New York, 1947, p. 109, pl. LXVII, illustrated 
Berto Lardera, "La XXVe Biennale de Venise, Biennale 1950," Les Arts Plastiques, no. 3, Brussels, July-August, 1950, p. 192, illustrated 
"30 pintores Mexicanos 100 obras," Artes de México, Vol. IV, no. 22-23, Mexico City, March-June, 1958, no. 21, illustrated 
Luis Cardoza y Aragón, México: Pintura Activa, Mexico City, 1961, illustrated 
Miguel Salas Anzures, "50 Años de Arte Mexicano," Artes de México, Vol. VIII, no. 38-39, Mexico City, 1962, illustrated 
Germán Rodríguez Sosa, "El arte universal de Rufino Tamayo," Claudia, no. 270, Mexico City, March, 1988, p. 64, illustrated in color 
Jaime Labastida, "Tamayo y la música," Plural Segunda época, Vol. XVII-XII, no. 204, Mexico City, September, 1988, p. 65, illustrated in color 
Octavio Paz, et al., Rufino Tamayo, Barcelona, 1994, no. 26, p. 74, illustrated in color 
Xiang Xiaosheng, Tamayo, China, 1995, p. 30, illustrated in color 
Octavio Paz, et al., Transfiguraciones en Historia del Arte de Oaxaca: Vol. III, Mexico City, 1998, no. 10, p. 24, illustrated in color 
Teresa del Conde, et al., Tamayo, Mexico City, 1998, p. 184, illustrated in color
Octavio Paz, Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, 2003, no. 23, illustrated in color 
Juan Arturo Brennan, et al., Cuerpo, Espíritu Medicina, y Creación Musical, Mexico City, 2004, p. 83, illustrated in color 
Teresa del Conde, et al., Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, 2011, p. 124, p. 275, illustrated in color

This work is in generally good condition overall. The canvas is unlined and loosely stretched. The colors are vibrant, and no paint losses are visible. The media layer is stable overall. A horizontal stretcher mark is visible in the center of the composition, most noticeable in the blue areas on the left and right sides. There is a two-inch area that may be inpainting in the upper center quadrant, in the blue sky above the figure. A pentimento is visible above the proper right knee of the figure, measuring approximately two inches in width. Fine lines of craquelure become apparent in the central right quadrant adjacent to the figure, as well as in the brown gourd in the extreme lower left.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

“Art is the realm of pure thought. As such, it, like other realms of pure thought, must be concerned with its own problems. Art is self-contained. Politics is not only unnecessary, it is irrelevant...

It is unfortunate that in art, unlike other fields of thought [Mathematics, Physics, Geometry, Biology …], artists have had to struggle for the status of men of thought, amidst constant pressure to reduce them to a position of inferior thinking. How much greater their contributions have been if they had been given the status and respects of our scientists? Those in both continents who are intent on this confusion, - when will they learn that there is no art of nations, only of people” (1) 

Barnett Newman, 1945

Written by New York School artist and sharp-witted critic Barnett Newman, these words introduced Rufino Tamayo and Adolph Gottlieb, two contemporary artists he deemed “ultra-sophisticated, startlingly original, and strongly individual” to the American public.(2) 

Using a characteristically unambiguous language, Newman argued against the validity of a national art categorizing most of Mexico's artistic production after the Revolution as propaganda. Echoing Tamayo’s own thoughts and repeated public statements, Newman adamantly dismissed Rivera and Orozco as “professional patriots.” “To paint an Indian does not create indigenous art.”(3) 

Knowing his apolitical standing would bring him neither public commissions nor a fertile market environment, Tamayo took the extraordinary step to move to New York--the indisputable choice for a self-imposed artistic exile. It was here, among an expatriate group of artists and Europe's intelligentsia that he was first recognized as one of the most talented artists of the twentieth century. Tamayo's first mature paintings of the 1940s are far removed from the political and social themes favored by government officials, the didactic narratives executed by artists close to the muralist project. (Fig. 1) 

New York afforded Tamayo with fertile ground to paint some of his most iconic pictures including The Bird Charmer. This monumental work was exhibited in 1946 at Tamayo's fourth individual and highly successful show at Valentine Gallery. At the time, Valentine was one of the leading galleries in America; it had hosted the first exhibitions of De Chirico, Kandinsky, Miró and Mondrian in New York. It also held important retrospectives of Matisse, Picasso and Utrillo. It was at Valentine that Picasso's masterpiece Guernica was exhibited at the start of its American Tour to raise funds for the almost extinct Spanish Republic. It was on these historical walls that John and Dominique de Menil first saw The Bird Charmer and acquired it for their modernist home in Houston, designed in 1948 by architect Philip Johnson. The present painting was considered so fundamental by Prof. Fernando Gamboa, Curator of the Mexican Pavilion at the 25^th Venice Biennial in 1950, that it was one of the sixteen works by Tamayo he selected among which were included: Animals (1941) from the Museum of Modern Art collection in New York, Women in Tehuantepec (1939) from the Albright Art Gallery, Nude in White (1943) from the Collection of Pierre Matisse, and Troubadour (1945) from the Randolph Macon Women's College in Virginia. 

The checklist of the Valentine exhibition is revealing. Its elated titles suggest Tamayo’s optimism after the War years. Paintings titled: Olga, The Toast, The Full Moon, The Troubadour, Dancers by The Sea appear next to The Blue Bird, The Bird-Nest and The Bird Charmer. What was it with birds? Was it Tamayo's fondness for painting atmospheres or the undefined infinity in which birds dwell? And, what exactly is a Bird Charmer? The Bird Charmer is a well-balanced, carefully executed, brilliantly and simply exposed solution to a complex painterly problem. At first sight, it is quite simple: a massive copper-clay musician plays a wind instrument against a purple-blue sky. Three small aircraft-looking birds dive down and point to the source of the music. The musician’s body rises between a gourd and the end of a wall corner. The horizon line suggests an interior scene, not a landscape. At close look however, the viewer discovers that parts of the body were reduced to geometric shapes: ovals, cones, arcs much in the tradition of Cézanne and Léger, straight lines delineate the body creating a powerful pentagon on the upper part which in turn sustains the composition’s focal point: the head and the instrument.

In terms of subject matter, Tamayo's admiration for Pre-Columbian art has been extensively discussed in the vast literature related to the artist. (Fig. 2) His approach to the art produced in Pre-Columbian times can be summarized with a brilliant commentary by Octavio Paz, a friend of the artist and one of his most ardent promoters (and in 1990, a Nobel Literature Laureate). In the introduction of the Guggenheim’s 1979 retrospective, Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, Paz wrote: “In art, there is no such thing as inheritance: there are discoveries, conquests, affinities… Tamayo is no exception. The modern aesthetic opened his eyes and made him see the modernity of pre-Hispanic sculpture.”(4)

In the first paragraph of his Guggenheim Museum essay titled An Art of Transfigurations, Octavio Paz talks about his experience in front of a work by Tamayo: “The painting is there in front of me, hanging on the wall. I look at it, and little by little, slowly but surely, it opens like a fan of sensations, a vibration of colors and shapes that spread out in waves. Living space, space happy to be space. He later concludes with an invitation to simply look at Tamayo without preconceptions: “There is no cry of passion in Tamayo, there is an almost mineral silence. I am not suggesting definitions, I am risking approximations. Expressionism, pictorial purity, criticism of the object, a passion for matter, a conception of color… The reality is other: Tamayo's paintings ... and the best criticism is an invitation to realize the only act that truly counts: seeing.”(5)

 

1. Newman, Barnett, Selected Writings and Interviews, University of California Press, 1992, p. 72

2. Ibid., p. 72

3. Ibid, p. 74

4. Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979, p. 20

5. Ibid, p.14