Existing comment:
Women of Tehuantepec
1939
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1941
Tamayo tackled iconic Mexican subjects with a joy for the act of painting. His Tehuana series hones in on native women from the Tehuantepec region who became potent national symbols in Mexican art in the early twentieth century. Tamayo's figures, while they do retain references to their distinctive ensembles and braided hair, are also fields on which the artist plays with paint, color, and composition. Women of Tehuantepec is arranged like a stage set, with layers of rectangular forms that recede into the distance. The skirt of the most visible figure in Woman is so abstractly rendered that it looks like unfinished canvas dripping with paint. Mystery, on the other hand, suffuses Two Women, where the figures walk through a moody landscape pierced by a diagonal earth-toned wall. |