Word: tamayo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...pictures, Tamayo has cut down on both the size (the current show includes the smallest canvases he has ever painted) and the violence of his work. He is now tempering with compassion and even humor the terror which he suggests by intense colors and dimly defined, erratic shapes. Tamayo can still terrorize, as in his Seized Cat, which shows an unworldly animal screaming and clawing in a frenzy of fury, but he seems now to want to avoid upsetting his audience. Heated Discussion, although done in disturbing flame reds, shows two comically human figures locked in eternal argument; each figure...
Smoky Dizziness. Tamayo confesses that Heated Discussion has personal roots. It reminds him of his arguments with David Siqueiros, who opposes Tamayo's work because it does not reflect the Marxist ideology which Communist Siqueiros insists is part of the Mexican heritage. Tamayo has also put some personal feeling−and a touch of his new humor−into Inexpert Smoker, which portrays a head gripping a pipe and surrounded with smoke, ashes and dizziness. Several years ago, Tamayo's wife bought him a pipe in London; he likes the feel of a pipe, but much smoking makes...
Aside from such comments, Tamayo is hesitant to interpret the meaning of his pictures. Says he: "I think painting should be a window through which the spectator lifts himself and his imagination." But he admits that he has tried to capture in his canvases the "aggressiveness−the violence and uncertainty in which we all live." He is also "very much interested in motion; it is characteristic of our time...
Unwanted Ghosts. To turn out so much in one year, Tamayo keeps himself to a hard schedule. He gets up early in the morning, works regular hours. "I practice painting as a trade," he says. "I don't believe very much in the muses gathering round you and inspiring you. I get up, have breakfast and go to work. It's all very hard work...
Many of the works in the current show are done in Vinylite, which Tamayo likes because of its quick-drying qualities. And, says he: "If you don't like what you have just painted, you can wipe it out with acetone. In oils, if you decide to do something different, you paint over it, and later, ghosts appear through the overpainted...