Personages with Birds (Personajes con pájaros)

Art © Tamayo Heirs/ Mexico/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
My gallery Comment Tag Order Photography*
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Personages with Birds (Personajes con pájaros)

Edition: 31/100

Mexico, 1988
Prints; Mixografía®
Mixografía® print on handmade paper
43 5/8 × 35 1/4 in. (110.8 × 89.53 cm)
The Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art (AC1997.LWN.3394)
Latin American Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Rufino Tamayo created Personages with Birds (Personajes con pájaros) towards the end of his very prolific career, demonstrating themes and motifs that continued throughout the artist’

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Rufino Tamayo created Personages with Birds (Personajes con pájaros) towards the end of his very prolific career, demonstrating themes and motifs that continued throughout the artist’s long life. Of the 358 prints listed in Tamayo’s catalogue raisonné, nearly three hundred feature the human figure and its parts. In Personages with Birds two figures raise their arms, conveying a sense of motion. Simple circles and straight lines suggest the eyes and nose of the person in the foreground, while alternating rectangles form the figureʼs abdomen. The subject in the back, however, bears no recognizable features and instead a single orange line emphasizes the figure’s verticality. Two birds accompany the people, though it is unclear whether they represent welcome companions or threats. The birds and double figures with raised arms—common throughout Tamayo’s career—hearken back to earlier works, such as his 1943 painting White Nude.


For more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in Rufino Tamayo: The Essential Figure, 2019, pp. 70–71.


Personages with Birds (Personajes con pájaros) was printed by the Taller de Gráfica Mexicana in Mexico City.
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Provenance

Bernard and Edith Lewin, Rancho Mirage, California; LACMA, 1997.

Bibliography

  • Kaplan, Rachel. Rufino Tamayo: The Essential Figure. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019.

Exhibition history

  • Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation Los Angeles, CA, Charles White Elementary School, December 21, 2019 - July 11, 2020
  • Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation Pomona, CA, Millard Sheets Art Center, May 3, 2024 - May 27, 2024
  • Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation Los Angeles, CA, Charles White Elementary School, December 21, 2019 - July 11, 2020
  • Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation Pomona, CA, Millard Sheets Art Center, May 3, 2024 - May 27, 2024
  • Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation Fort Worth, TX, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, November 15, 2024 - April 24, 2025
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