Tamayo: Mixografías
Tamayo: Mixografías
Aesthetic Material Available
12 NOV 2022 - 02 ABR 2023
Curated by Juan Carlos Pereda
Curated by Juan Carlos Pereda
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¡HOY!
Starting in 1920 and until his death in 1991, Rufino Tamayo produced a wide and original body of printed works that allowed him to experiment in ways similar to those he did in painting throughout his life. Although Tamayo never explicitly expressed interest in the printed arts, his aesthetic, technical and conceptual contributions reveal underlying motivations such as the reproducibility of the work and the democratization of his artistic practice.
The exhibition Tamayo: Mixografías brings together all of the works produced after 1978, in a technique that the artist himself developed with the help of the engineer Luis Remba, at the Taller de Gráfica Mexicana in the early 1970s. While these forty-six examples capture many elements of Tamayo's unique visual iconography, they also display volumes and textures in a completely unprecedented way, over a handcrafted paper capable of absorbing ink to achieve intense colors, while moving away from the linear traits of traditional 20th-century printmaking. In addition to bearing witness to the Oaxacan master's tireless experimental spirit, this group of works adds to his sensitivity and expression of identity.
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Mixografía is a printing technique made with a master plate. A variety of materials are applied to this support as collage, over which the artist adheres, rips or scribes to achieve a high relief. From this master plate, molds are created, which in turn are used to obtain a copper plate that collects every detail of the negative plate. The plate is then inked and transferred to a press that prints on handmade paper pulp—a mixture of cotton fibers, water and sizing. The result is a print on paper with volume, showing the reliefs, textures and colors of the plate.
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In 1974, Tamayo forged a professional relationship with mechanical engineer and printmaker Luis Remba, owner of Taller de Gráfica Mexicana, a commercial printmaking workshop created in 1969 that would soon venture into artistic experimentation. Their collaboration was a result of the technical demands of the Oaxacan artist, who sought to take advantage of the multiple aspects of printmaking in order to achieve forms of expression similar to those of painting.
Between 1974 and 1977 the Taller de Gráfica Mexicana issued thirty-two mixografías printed on industrial paper. In 1978 the first mixografía on handmade paper was printed. Tamayo made thirty-five more editions of works printed with this technique, of which there are variants in their inking.
Today, mixografías are only printed at the Taller Mixografía in Los Angeles, California, founded in 1984 by Luis Remba himself as a second branch of the Taller de Gráfica Mexicana.
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In 1981, Rufino Tamayo conceived a series of miniature mixografías that would serve as an invitation to the opening of this museum, and that were distributed amongst the artistic community of Mexico, the political class, and the Oaxacan master’s friends and colleagues. These images depicted three characters—a female and two males—whose solitary and extremely minimal figures stand out against a background of deep tones and textures. Twelve different variants were completed, underlining the work’s reproductible nature through the different inkings.
