Seeking an expressive and modern manner of painting, Rufino Tamayo fused Mexican traditions with avant-garde artistic innovations. In Woman with a Bird Cage, the influence of Cubism is apparent in Tamayo’s depiction of the woman’s body, which has been fractured into planes of color. Yet her distinctive elongated ear, large nose, open mouth, and the other aspects of her physiognomy reflect the artist’s study of Pre-Columbian art. Although Tamayo, unlike his countrymen Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, did not address overtly social themes in his paintings, his references to the ancient and indigenous art forms of his country suggest that his art was no less concerned with aspects of Mexican identity.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Dorothy Odenheimer, “Woman with Bird Cage by Tamayo,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 37, 3 (March 1943), 33–35, ill.
Robert Goldwater, Rufino Tamayo (New York: Quadrangle Press, 1947), 81, pl. 37.
Drawings by Tamayo (Mexico: Ediciones Mexicanas, 1950), 25 (related drawing).
Léon Degand, “La peinture mexicaine du XVIIe s. a nos jours,” L’Art d’aujourdhui 3, 6 (August 1952), 9, fig. 8.
Exposition universelle et internationale, Les Arts (Bruxelles: Establissements Généreaux d’Impr., 1960), n.p., ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 444.
Damián Bayón, Hacia Tamayo (Mexico: Fundación Olga y Rufina Tamayo; Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995), ill. p. 43.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 82, ill.
Barbara Braun, “West Mexican Art and Modernist Artists,” in Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, edited by Richard F. Townsend (Art Institute of Chicago/Thames and Hudson, 1998), 278–79, fig. 20.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of CHicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 95.
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Figure Pieces in Modern Painting, Jan. 20–Feb. 14, 1942, cat. 12.
Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, Tamayo, May 4–31, 1945, cat. 27.
Council for Inter–American Cooperation (organizer), Six Latin American Painters, Kansas City, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Apr. 1946; San Francisco, Museum of Art, May 10–June 9, 1946; Bloomfield Hills, MI, Cranbrook Museum of the Academy of Art, June 23–July 30, 1946; and Dallas, Museum of Fine Arts, Aug. 1946; no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Winterbotham Collection, May 23–June 22, 1947, 41–41, ill.
Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Tamayo: 20 años de su labor pictórica, 1948, cat. 25.
Mexican government (organizer), Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, under Art Mexicain du précolumbien a nos jours, May–July 1952, cat. 1063, as Femme a la cage; Stockholm, Sweden, Liljevalchs Konsthall, under Mexikansk Konst från forntid till nutid, Oct. 1952, cat. 1048, as Kvinna med bur.; London, Tate Gallery, under Exhibition of Mexican Art from Pre–Columbian Times to the Present Day, Mar. 4 to Apr. 26, 1953, cat. 1041.
Exposition de Bruxelles, Mexican Pavilion, 1958.
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, May 18–Aug. 12, 1979, cat. 20.
Madrid, Spain, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Rufino Tamayo: Pinturas, June 29–Oct. 3, 1988, cat. 19.
Mexico City, Fundación Cultural Televisa/Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, Rufino Tamayo: del reflejo al sueño, 1920–1950, Oct. 1995–Jan. 1996, cat. 70.
Art Institute of Chicago, Ancient West Mexico: Art of the Unknown Past, Sept. 5–Nov. 22, 1998; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dec. 20, 1998–Mar. 29, 1999, cat. 224.
Art Institute of Chicago, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910–1950, Mar. 3–June 3, 2013, cat. 43.
Washington, DC, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Tamayo: The New York Years, Nov. 3, 2017–Mar. 18, 2018, no cat no., pl. 28.
Rufino Tamayo; Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1942.
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