Existing comment:
Animals
1941
oil on canvas
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Inter-American Fund
Two barking dogs, rib cages exposed, stand in a barren landscape littered with bones and a rock. The source of their aggression remains unclear. Animals was the first animal-themed painting Tamayo created after seeing Picasso's Guernica. Like the Spanish master, Tamayo came to view animals as allegories that could convey the anxieties and injustices of war. Tamayo often modeled his animals after pre-Columbian art, including terra-cotta dog sculptures from Colima that were used in burial contexts, an appropriate reference for works that ponder the destruction of war. The connection between Tamayo and Picasso was so strong during these years that one reviewer called Tamayo "the one artist to paint the Mexican Guernica." |