Lot Essay
Rufino Tamayo's Children Playing with Fire is a highly significant painting from one of the artist's most fruitful and aesthetically satisfying periods of his careers. It is a monument to the emotional depth and expressive tension that appeared most dramatically in the paintings of the 1940s. It is a work that inspires both awe and terror in any viewer's imagination. It impresses us even more, however, if we view it against the background of Tamayo's personal activities and the political events which took place in the decade in which it was created.
Tamayo spent most of the decade of the 1940s in New York. Although he had made several trips to Manhattan beginning as early as 1926, his longest stay in the city began in 1936. He and his wife Olga Flores Tamayo would spend most of the year in New York City, reserving the summers for return trips to Mexico. His famous 1937 composition New York from My Terrace (private collection), gives us some idea of the fascination that the city held for the newly arrived artist. In New York Tamayo painted with renewed energy. He also gave classes in art at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan's Upper East Side where his pupils included at least one future artistic master, Helen Frankenthaler. During this decade-long stay in the United States Tamayo also painted one of the most impressive murals of his career in the Hillyer Art Library at Smith College.
Although Tamayo had studied the European and North American avant-garde in exhibitions during earlier trips, the work that he saw in the New York museums and galleries in the late 30s and 40s especially marked his future artistic production. He stated at one point that "I always had a very clear idea that New York was the center of art. My art was truly formed in New York. There I learned how to loosen my hand, to overcome the vices that I had learned in school, to discipline myself and to overcome my loneliness and misery." Nothing impressed him more than Picasso's Guernica which he saw in its first showing at the Valentine Gallery (1939) and later at the Museum of Modern Art. The suggestions of violence and drama of this masterpiece deeply impressed Tamayo and his work thereafter indelibly demonstrates his admiration for the Spanish artist's achievement. The powerful angularity of the orthangonal present in Guernica were soon incorporated into many of Tamayo's compositions. In no case, however, can we point to the Mexican artist as paying specific homage to his Spanish contemporary. Nonetheless, the emotional forces which emanate from Tamayo's strongest paintings of the 1940s must inevitably be viewed in the light of his reactions to Guernica and to Picasso's work of that time in general.
Tamayo consistently rejected any overt polical references in his art yet it cannot be denied that the terrors of the Second World War played a major role in forming his artistic vision in the 1940s. A number of the paintings from this decade may be considered as strong anti-war statements. Although reflecting none of the topical realities of the conflicts in Europe or Asia, many of his works radiate a sense of dread, disgust and pain caused by the inhumanities of the war. Tamayo's series of animal paintings from the early 40s portray lions, horses and dogs in aggressive, even threatening poses. Anguish and distress are patently manifest in these pictures. Even more poignant and more psychologically unsettling are the works in which children are shown. The well-known 1947 painting Strange Girl Attacked by a Bird (New York, Museum of Modern Art) may be read as a metaphor for the destruction of innocence and hope. It may well be a parable of the world's suffering but may also be statement regarding the artist's melancholy at the state of social affairs in his native country (as has been suggested by at least one Mexican critic). The most outstanding of all of these disturbing paintings of the 1940s are those several masterpieces in which people rush through what appear to be walls of flame. Fuego (Fire) of 1946 (private collection) is an awe-inspiring work in which a man and woman run from burning buildings, shielding their faces from the heat. Children Playing with Fire is even more intensely moving since the victims of this holocaust are innocent youths. Tamayo was a great student of the artistic traditions of all ages. He was certainly aware, therefore, of the most significant art-historical precedent for his paintings of fire. Raphael's fresco of the Fire in the Borgo was painted for one of the papal apartments in the Vatican and relates the events of a terrible conflagration in the old medieval sector of Rome. Figures rush to and from, creating a web of frenzied activity. In Children Playing with Fire Tamayo reminds us of his reverence for past traditions such as those of Raphael and other Renaissance masters. He infuses them with a vital energy derived in part from Picasso's means of forceful expression. Nonetheless, Children Playing with Fire would not convey the emotional impact which it so forcefully possesses were it not for the singular originality that stamps this painting with the indelible mark of Tamayo's own inventive genius.
Edward Sullivan
Phoenix, 1994
Tamayo spent most of the decade of the 1940s in New York. Although he had made several trips to Manhattan beginning as early as 1926, his longest stay in the city began in 1936. He and his wife Olga Flores Tamayo would spend most of the year in New York City, reserving the summers for return trips to Mexico. His famous 1937 composition New York from My Terrace (private collection), gives us some idea of the fascination that the city held for the newly arrived artist. In New York Tamayo painted with renewed energy. He also gave classes in art at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan's Upper East Side where his pupils included at least one future artistic master, Helen Frankenthaler. During this decade-long stay in the United States Tamayo also painted one of the most impressive murals of his career in the Hillyer Art Library at Smith College.
Although Tamayo had studied the European and North American avant-garde in exhibitions during earlier trips, the work that he saw in the New York museums and galleries in the late 30s and 40s especially marked his future artistic production. He stated at one point that "I always had a very clear idea that New York was the center of art. My art was truly formed in New York. There I learned how to loosen my hand, to overcome the vices that I had learned in school, to discipline myself and to overcome my loneliness and misery." Nothing impressed him more than Picasso's Guernica which he saw in its first showing at the Valentine Gallery (1939) and later at the Museum of Modern Art. The suggestions of violence and drama of this masterpiece deeply impressed Tamayo and his work thereafter indelibly demonstrates his admiration for the Spanish artist's achievement. The powerful angularity of the orthangonal present in Guernica were soon incorporated into many of Tamayo's compositions. In no case, however, can we point to the Mexican artist as paying specific homage to his Spanish contemporary. Nonetheless, the emotional forces which emanate from Tamayo's strongest paintings of the 1940s must inevitably be viewed in the light of his reactions to Guernica and to Picasso's work of that time in general.
Tamayo consistently rejected any overt polical references in his art yet it cannot be denied that the terrors of the Second World War played a major role in forming his artistic vision in the 1940s. A number of the paintings from this decade may be considered as strong anti-war statements. Although reflecting none of the topical realities of the conflicts in Europe or Asia, many of his works radiate a sense of dread, disgust and pain caused by the inhumanities of the war. Tamayo's series of animal paintings from the early 40s portray lions, horses and dogs in aggressive, even threatening poses. Anguish and distress are patently manifest in these pictures. Even more poignant and more psychologically unsettling are the works in which children are shown. The well-known 1947 painting Strange Girl Attacked by a Bird (New York, Museum of Modern Art) may be read as a metaphor for the destruction of innocence and hope. It may well be a parable of the world's suffering but may also be statement regarding the artist's melancholy at the state of social affairs in his native country (as has been suggested by at least one Mexican critic). The most outstanding of all of these disturbing paintings of the 1940s are those several masterpieces in which people rush through what appear to be walls of flame. Fuego (Fire) of 1946 (private collection) is an awe-inspiring work in which a man and woman run from burning buildings, shielding their faces from the heat. Children Playing with Fire is even more intensely moving since the victims of this holocaust are innocent youths. Tamayo was a great student of the artistic traditions of all ages. He was certainly aware, therefore, of the most significant art-historical precedent for his paintings of fire. Raphael's fresco of the Fire in the Borgo was painted for one of the papal apartments in the Vatican and relates the events of a terrible conflagration in the old medieval sector of Rome. Figures rush to and from, creating a web of frenzied activity. In Children Playing with Fire Tamayo reminds us of his reverence for past traditions such as those of Raphael and other Renaissance masters. He infuses them with a vital energy derived in part from Picasso's means of forceful expression. Nonetheless, Children Playing with Fire would not convey the emotional impact which it so forcefully possesses were it not for the singular originality that stamps this painting with the indelible mark of Tamayo's own inventive genius.
Edward Sullivan
Phoenix, 1994