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拍品专文
We are grateful to art historian Juan Carlos Pereda for his assistance cataloguing this work.
Rufino Tamayo’s fascination with space travel reflected his remarkable interest in man’s place within the vast universe. In the 1940s with a world war as backdrop, Tamayo’s angst found expression in various works such as Animales (1941) among others that reveal his connection to the collective anger and despair experienced globally at the time. In the aftermath of the war which had devastated several continents, the artist’s works expressed his deep concerns for the future of mankind. In his new paintings, such as the monumental El hombre (Dallas Art Association, 1953), his human figures or subjects yearn to connect to the cosmos and soar into infinity in search for spiritual respite and consciousness. “Space," Tamayo explained, "acquired a new meaning for me, man was no longer confronting his earthly world only, but also infinity.”[1]
In The Astronauts, Tamayo’s description of outer space is startlingly joyous. His blues are brilliant and jewel-tone, and his spaceships are elegant vehicles that spring symmetrically from the center of the composition mimicking toy airplanes, rather than the rockets that had gone up into the stratosphere since the race for space began in the late 1950s. His spacecrafts burst onto an azure weightless space in exploration of the unknown. His Earth, by contrast, is a dark mound from which mankind now ventures bravely into worlds beyond. By the time this work was painted in 1971, men had already landed on the Moon two years earlier but the giddiness of journeys to the stars and galaxies, only imagined in popular science fiction novels before, further fueled mankind’s enthrallment with space exploration. It was possible to reach the stars, after all. The entire world had seen American astronauts land on the Moon and plant a small flag on its craggy surface. Indeed, this event led Tamayo to create a series of works relating to space, including not only the present painting but also the earlier painting Hombre en el espacio (1970) sold at Christie’s Latin American sale in November 2009, is also devoted to the era of scientific investigation of the universe.
Tamayo’s oeuvre engaged the epic, tragic, optimistic, human themes that transcend nationalism and evoke universal ideas. His aesthetic was influenced by the modernist currents he experienced outside his native Mexico and his remarkable use of splendid color to evoke the universal spirit of humanity that links all mankind.
Margarita Aguilar, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, New York.
1) As quoted in J. Barnitz, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001, 118.
Rufino Tamayo’s fascination with space travel reflected his remarkable interest in man’s place within the vast universe. In the 1940s with a world war as backdrop, Tamayo’s angst found expression in various works such as Animales (1941) among others that reveal his connection to the collective anger and despair experienced globally at the time. In the aftermath of the war which had devastated several continents, the artist’s works expressed his deep concerns for the future of mankind. In his new paintings, such as the monumental El hombre (Dallas Art Association, 1953), his human figures or subjects yearn to connect to the cosmos and soar into infinity in search for spiritual respite and consciousness. “Space," Tamayo explained, "acquired a new meaning for me, man was no longer confronting his earthly world only, but also infinity.”[1]
In The Astronauts, Tamayo’s description of outer space is startlingly joyous. His blues are brilliant and jewel-tone, and his spaceships are elegant vehicles that spring symmetrically from the center of the composition mimicking toy airplanes, rather than the rockets that had gone up into the stratosphere since the race for space began in the late 1950s. His spacecrafts burst onto an azure weightless space in exploration of the unknown. His Earth, by contrast, is a dark mound from which mankind now ventures bravely into worlds beyond. By the time this work was painted in 1971, men had already landed on the Moon two years earlier but the giddiness of journeys to the stars and galaxies, only imagined in popular science fiction novels before, further fueled mankind’s enthrallment with space exploration. It was possible to reach the stars, after all. The entire world had seen American astronauts land on the Moon and plant a small flag on its craggy surface. Indeed, this event led Tamayo to create a series of works relating to space, including not only the present painting but also the earlier painting Hombre en el espacio (1970) sold at Christie’s Latin American sale in November 2009, is also devoted to the era of scientific investigation of the universe.
Tamayo’s oeuvre engaged the epic, tragic, optimistic, human themes that transcend nationalism and evoke universal ideas. His aesthetic was influenced by the modernist currents he experienced outside his native Mexico and his remarkable use of splendid color to evoke the universal spirit of humanity that links all mankind.
Margarita Aguilar, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, New York.
1) As quoted in J. Barnitz, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001, 118.