About
Mexican painter and printmaker of the mid-20th century who combined modern European painting styles with Mexican folk themes. He was known for his large-scale murals and vivid use of color.
Before Fame
After his mother's death he moved to Mexico City to live with his aunt, where he spent a lot of time working alongside her in the city's fruit markets. In 1917 his aunt enrolled him at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas at San Carlos to study art. In 1921, he began working for José Vasconcelos at the Department of Ethnographic Drawings and was later appointed head of the department.
Trivia
While living in New York City in the 1940s, he instructed Helen Frankenthaler at the Dalton School. He also met Henri Matisse at an exhibition in Brooklyn in 1928.
Family Life
He was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. His father was a shoemaker and his mother a seamstress. His mother died of tuberculosis in 1911. He married Olga Flores in 1934 while painting a mural in Mexico City. From 1937 to 1949, they lived in New York. In 1959, they returned to Mexico permanently and built an art museum in his home town of Oaxaca, called the Museo Rufino Tamayo.
Associated With
His contemporaries were José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Oswaldo Guayasamín, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
