In early 1944 Rufino Tamayo returned to Mexico after a long period in New York. That August his gallery in Mexico City, the Galería de Arte Mexicano, opened an exhibition of his recent works, which the local press touted as a welcome homecoming for one of their own who had garnered recognition in the United States. Butterfly Hunter was one of the new paintings included in this exhibition.
In Butterfly Hunter, Tamayo plays with geometric shapes to develop the form of his figure and her surroundings. The girl, wearing a dress composed of a triangular prism, runs after the butterflies amid a landscape of angular rocks and stacked rectangles suggesting a group of nearby buildings. The girl reaching out to catch the fluttering creatures introduces movement into the scene, which works with the painting’s colors and shapes to engender a sense of vibrant dynamism—an increasing concern for Tamayo during this period.
For more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in Rufino Tamayo: The Essential Figure, 2019, pp. 30–31.
