Nia Bonita

This important painting reveals an ironic departure by the Oaxacan artist from the tradition of Mexican neo-classism that produced notable children's portraits in the nineteenth century. Tamayo borrows the setting from the photographic studios that still utilized--in the first decades of the present century--balustrades and pedestals to divide the space of full-length civilian portraits so popular at the time into "foreground" and "background." Here, Tamayo offers us a lesson of spatial technique. In appearance, this would be a portrait of a young girl on a balcony facing the sky and the sea, but immediately the illusion revealed by the curtain in the background is made evident. At the same time the realistic weightiness of that Mexican public park obelisk, the end of the balustrade, is contrasted with the fragile pole--like a stage prop--that raises a tiny flag possessing no greater distance than that of the base, situated slightly behind. In regard to the colors, the contrast between the vermillion of the child's dress and the grayish blue background is remarkable. But the canvas' masterly touch is in that background curtain whose color scheme is a first version of what would be the richly worked surfaces of Tamayo's later production. It appears here as a harbinger of the pictorial space to come, fundamentally constituted by vibrant surfaces full of chromatic nuances.

Jaime Moreno Villarreal
Mexico City 1998
Translated by Dr. Wayne H. Finke