Rufino Tamayo Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Tamayo Rufino (Oaxaca, 1899 - Mexico City, 1991) Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter. In 1915 he began taking drawing lessons, and in 1921 he became head of the ethnographic drawing department of the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia in Mexico City, where he drew the museum's pre-Columbian objects and reworked the grayish colors and shapes of pre-Columbian ceramics. Read the full biography

Rufino Tamayo Biography

Tamayo Rufino (Oaxaca, 1899 - Mexico City, 1991) Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter. In 1915 he began taking drawing lessons, and in 1921 he became head of the ethnographic drawing department of the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia in Mexico City, where he drew the museum's pre-Columbian objects and reworked the grayish colors and shapes of pre-Columbian ceramics. He had his first exhibition in 1926 at the Weyhe Gallery in New York and in 1923 he created his first mural for the Escuela Nacional de Musica in Mexico City. In the late 1930s and early 1940s he exhibited at the Valentine Gallery in New York and taught for nine years at the Dalton School. He organized his first retrospective at the Istituto de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. In 1956 he received the nomination of Chevalier from the French government and in 1969 that of Officier de la Lègion d'Honneur. His works are present in solo and collective exhibitions all over the world. He organized two important retrospectives at the Sao Paulo Biennial (1977) and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1979).