White Head

271

Artwork copyright held by the artist

Artwork Information

Artist:

Rufino Tamayo (Rufino del Carmen Arellanes Tamayo)

Date:

1975

Media:

Etching in colors on Guarro paper, signed in pencil and numbered 7/75

Size:

28 ½” x 36”

Location:

T-Building (TBG), room 312

About the Artist:

Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter and printmaker known for his large-scale murals and vivid use of color. Like his peers Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco, Tamayo helped bring international attention to Mexican art. Influenced by his pre-Columbian heritage as well as Cubism and Surrealism, Tamayo portrayed vernacular subjects like watermelons and animals in a unique formal vocabulary. “Art is a means of expression that must be understood by everybody, everywhere,” he stated. “It grows out of the earth, the textures of our lives, and our experience.” Born on August 26, 1899 in Oaxaca, Mexico, Tamayo left the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts after a year and began to teach himself. He moved to New York in the 1930s after having a falling out with the politically driven Rivera and Siqueiros in his home county. Eventually returning to Mexico in 1959, he founded the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in his birthplace of Oaxaca during the early 1980s. The artist continued to produce some of his most compelling works including Moon and Sun (1990) right up until his death on June 24, 1991 in Mexico City, Mexico at the age of 91. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

Artwork description:

A white head with simplified eyes, nose, and mouth sits in the center of a muted yellow rounded shape surrounded by a lighter yellow color. There is a lot of subtile texture to the surface and color.

Acquisition Information:

Gift from Eugene Seidel in 2012.
Gene is fondly remembered by family and friends for his love of people, gentility of manner and deep sense of civic duty, which found expression in community service. A few examples are membership on the Clark County Board of Adjustment for 10 years and as chair or vice-chair for six, on many local structures such as the Mayor's Advisory Committee for Camas and regional bodies for the planning of health delivery and community services, such as the Clark County Comprehensive Health Planning Committee and the Washington State Health Coordinating Council. He also was an advocate and supporter of Clark College's Child and Family Studies Program and expressed his love of art, architecture and gardens through designing several homes and helping establish the nature trail at the Indian Summer Golf Course, which is named after him and the Harmony Garden therapeutic horticultural program at Willamette View. —Oregonian

Clark College - Home of the Penguin Nation