拍品专文
“Tamayo draws like a sculptor, and it is sad that he has given us only a few sculptures,” the Mexican poet laureate Octavio Paz once reflected. “His is a sculptor’s drawing in the vigor and restraint of the line but above all in its essentiality—it shows the points of convergence, the dominant lines that control an anatomy or a form. Synthetic, in no way calligraphic drawing: the true skeleton of painting. . . . Tamayo’s space is an animated extension: weight and movement, earthly forms, the universal obedience to the laws of gravitation or to the more subtle laws of magnetism” (“An Art of Transfigurations,” Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1979, p. 13). Tamayo worked only intermittently in the sculptural field, but the eight works he produced in 1989—Atlante among them—constitute a remarkable re-engagement with the medium and its ancient origins. Like Ancestro and Hombre rojo, commissioned at the same time by GVG Editions (Monterrey), Atlante translates the historical gravitas and bearing of the human figure—Tamayo’s most enduring subject—into cut steel, whose rich patina of textured pigments and marble dust the artist applied himself.
“The other steel sculptures created recently by Tamayo are of dramatically different proportions—both physical and psychological,” wrote art historian Edward J. Sullivan of this late-career series. “They are spectral male and female presences, towering over the spectator—literally haunting the viewer like a phantom from our dreams. . . . The evocation of the primeval is equally present in Ancestro and Atlante with their squarely geometric torsos and simplified faces. In these faces it is the eyes which are the most salient features. They are formed of holes (in the case of Atlante)…that have a curiously penetrating effect on anyone who looks at them.” Atlante rises tall, his formidable figure formed from planes of steel encrusted with dramatic colors—red, white, black—that soften the geometry of his form. “One of the most outstanding characteristics of these 1989 sculptures are the patinas with which they are richly endowed,” Sullivan notes. “The texture varies from inch to inch throughout the surface of the sculpture on both the back and the front. At times we can see the marks of the thick brush or palette knife with which the patina was applied; at other times the artist’s own fingers can be sensed running over the surface of the sculpture” (“Drawing in Space: The Sculpture of Rufino Tamayo,” Sculpture and Mixographs by Rufino Tamayo, exh. cat., Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, 1990, p. 2, 5).
The work’s title alludes to the famed Atlantean sculptures built by ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Toltecs (Tula) and the Mayans (Chichén Itzá). Sullivan cites an additional source in “the koure and kouros types of Archaic period Greek sculpture,” noting that Tamayo had “returned (in part) to the roots of the western aesthetic tradition to give it new life and a new, highly personal and innovative interpretation” (ibid., p. 2).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
“The other steel sculptures created recently by Tamayo are of dramatically different proportions—both physical and psychological,” wrote art historian Edward J. Sullivan of this late-career series. “They are spectral male and female presences, towering over the spectator—literally haunting the viewer like a phantom from our dreams. . . . The evocation of the primeval is equally present in Ancestro and Atlante with their squarely geometric torsos and simplified faces. In these faces it is the eyes which are the most salient features. They are formed of holes (in the case of Atlante)…that have a curiously penetrating effect on anyone who looks at them.” Atlante rises tall, his formidable figure formed from planes of steel encrusted with dramatic colors—red, white, black—that soften the geometry of his form. “One of the most outstanding characteristics of these 1989 sculptures are the patinas with which they are richly endowed,” Sullivan notes. “The texture varies from inch to inch throughout the surface of the sculpture on both the back and the front. At times we can see the marks of the thick brush or palette knife with which the patina was applied; at other times the artist’s own fingers can be sensed running over the surface of the sculpture” (“Drawing in Space: The Sculpture of Rufino Tamayo,” Sculpture and Mixographs by Rufino Tamayo, exh. cat., Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, 1990, p. 2, 5).
The work’s title alludes to the famed Atlantean sculptures built by ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Toltecs (Tula) and the Mayans (Chichén Itzá). Sullivan cites an additional source in “the koure and kouros types of Archaic period Greek sculpture,” noting that Tamayo had “returned (in part) to the roots of the western aesthetic tradition to give it new life and a new, highly personal and innovative interpretation” (ibid., p. 2).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park