By the late 1970s, Rufino Tamayo had been working with the Mixografía printmaking technique for several years. The experimental impulse to constantly rethink the limits and possibilities of printmaking drove Tamayo to consider creating a print on the scale of a mural. A print of this size would have a monumental impact. However, where a mural is typically fixed in a single location (such as a museum or other public institution), a print would be able to achieve greater circulation, with multiple impressions in an edition.

Two Personages Attacked by Dogs is Tamayo’s manifestation of this idea and a product of three years of work. The print measures just over five feet tall by eight feet wide; and represents as much an engineering feat as an artistic one. Completed in an edition of seventy-five, Two Personages Attacked by Dogs fulfilled Tamayo’s vision of disseminating a work of immense scale.