In this vibrant composition, a woman holds a wooden tray filled with fruits, including apples, mameys, mangos, bananas, and pomegranates. While many of these fruits are now popular in Mexico, only mamey is native to the country; the rest were introduced there through trade routes with Asia and Europe going back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The woman, on the other hand, is distinctly Indigenous.
Born in Oaxaca, Rufino Tamayo was of Zapotec descent, a fact he embraced to promote his art and celebrate its ties to Indigenous and Mesoamerican art and culture. Tamayo moved to Mexico City as a child to live with extended family following the death of his mother. While studying accounting and taking classes at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (National School of Fine Arts), he worked in the family’s fruit shop, perhaps a reference for this canvas. His early training inspired Tamayo to devote himself fully to painting. Highly motivated, he organized his first solo exhibition on April 10, 1926, in a storefront next to the Zócalo (Mexico City’s main square). The show featured twenty paintings, including this one.
Rachel Kaplan
2024
