Woman with a Bird Cage combines Rufino Tamayo’s deep appreciation of ancient Mesoamerican art with his interest in Cubism, the 20th-century abstract art movement created by artists Pablo Picasso and George Braque. The influence of Cubism is apparent in the woman’s body, which Tamayo fractured into planes of color. Yet her distinctive elongated ear, large nose, open mouth, and the other aspects of her form reflect the Indigenous artist’s study of West Mexican ceramic sculptures (similar examples of which are on view in Gallery 136), which he collected enthusiastically. The synthesis of the two styles suggests his desire to introduce personal aspects of his Zapotec identity into modernist painting.
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.
Signed and inscribed recto, bottom-right, in black pigment: "Tamayo / 41". Titled and signed verso, top-middle, on stretcher, in graphite: "WOMAN with A BIRD CAGE / TAMAYO".
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 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, 2009), 211–13, cat. 95 (ill.).
Sarah Kelly Oehler, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 55–56, cat. 43 (ill.).
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.
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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