In addition to easel painting, Rufino Tamayo created several allegorical murals. Study for America (Estudio de América) is a preparatory drawing for a mural commissioned by the Bank of the Southwest in Houston in 1954. The fragmentation of the figures recalls Picasso's Guernica, a work that Tamayo saw in New York in 1938. Lying across the bottom of the composition is America, represented as a nude woman flanked by a fish and a plant, symbols of the bounty of the continent. From her body spring two embracing women—one white, the other dark—as emblems of the racial and cultural makeup of America. The white figure next to a cross symbolizes Western culture. The darker figure stands for the Indian race and is shown next to the head of the Aztec god Quetzalcóatl.

Ilona Katzew, 2008

Tamayo largely rejected political art, putting him at odds with many leaders of the mural movement that flourished in Mexico in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). Whereas officially commissioned murals often included narrative scenes, Tamayo’s murals featured allegorical imagery, as in this study for a commission by the Bank of the Southwest headquarters in Houston, Texas. Here, two figures—one white, one brown—emerge from a reclining female figure who represents America. A cross and the head of a feathered serpent (the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcóatl) draw from European and Indigenous iconographies to symbolize the complex cultural history of the continent.

From exhibition Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation, 2019–2020 (for more information see the catalogue entry in the accompanying publication, pp. 32–33)