Mujer india

These colors may not recall the typical Mexican palette, but they are Mexican nonetheless. They are the paint colors that villagers use on their houses, Rufino Tamayo says. These are very cheap colors, the only ones the people can afford. This synthesis of old and new Mexico marks Tamayo's work. As a young man in 1921 he was head of the ethnographic drawing department at Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. His office was in the middle of the pre-Columbian collections. That and his Zapotec Indian parentage led to a personal style of primitivism. His highly textured figures, says one critic, have a flayed, corroded, vibrating look.