Mexican, b. 1899, Oaxaca, Mexico — d. 1991, Mexico City, Mexico
Lived and worked in Mexico City, Mexico and New York, New York

Rufino Tamayo was a prolific artist who was a master of many mediums, including oil, watercolor and lithography. His signature images of mask-like faces and statuesque figures are rooted in his Indian origins and in his study of Mexican folk art and Pre-Columbian sculpture. Tamayo sought the essential, which he expressed through a deliberately limited range of colors in order to give the freest possible rein to tonal interplay. His subject matter tends to be simple — figures of men and women and animals that are almost sketchy, although charged with content. From beginning to end, his painting is saturated with Mexican color and light.

Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate, wrote: If I could express with a single word what it is that distinguishes Tamayo from other painters of our age, I would say, without a moment's hesitation: sun. For the sun is in all his pictures, whether we see it or not; night itself is for Tamayo simply the sun carbonized.

In addition to producing works on paper and canvas, Tamayo was also a muralist whose work adorns the walls of museums, universities and libraries throughout the world. He also pioneered a new printmaking technique known as Mixografia with several of his works produced in this medium. This innovative process allows a traditional lithographic print to be created in relief that produces fine surface detail as well as volume. In his later years, Tamayo added sculpture to his artistic repertoire, utilizing his own paintings as a source of inspiration for subject matter.

Rufino Tamayo was given a large exhibition at the Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil in 1977. In 1979 a retrospective Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The largest Tamayo exhibition, bringing together more than 700 paintings, took place in 1987 at two museums in Mexico City, the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts and the Tamayo Museum. Rufino Tamayo artworks are represented in prestigious art museum collections internationally. His work is popular among individual art collectors as well.