Respect to: Rodolfo Nieto

While Rufino Tamayo founded the Oaxacan School, it was Rodolfo Nieto who defined it. Rodolfo added a dramatic tone to skull art. Using light colors fixed against dark hues, he showed the continual battle of life and death. With gaiety, humor, whimsies, and boyhood stories of Tarzan the Ape Man fighting the perils of the jungle, Rodolfo laughed at death while living in the shadows of his own deepening depression.¹ Flashes of light confused by color, juxtaposed against the stark black canvasses, he did not attempt to define human existence, but just to live it, knowing that the skull was always within him.² His painter wife Nancy Nieto removed the fleshy mask of life in order to examine the basis of life, the skull and skeleton.....

 

 

 

Rodolfo Nieto Labastida (b. Oaxaca, July 13, 1936 - d. Mexico City, June 24, 1985) was a Mexican painter of the Oaxacan School (apprenticed under Diego Rivera, later served him as an assistant).

Rodolfo Nieto was born at home in Oaxaca on July 13, 1936. His father Rodolfo Nieto Gris, a medical epidemiologist, left the home mysteriously around 1949. After his disappearance, the family became destitute; his mother, Josefina Labastida de Nieto, a homemaker, moved to Mexico City with Rodolfo and his younger brother Carlos Nieto, a poet, who was later murdered after Rodolfo died; formed a new family & half brother, Ignacio Saucedo was born. In Mexico City, Nieto began studies in 1954 at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", Mexico City, where he studied with Carlos Orozco Romero and met Juan Soriano, who introduced him to books on European painting. In 1959, he had his first solo exhibition at the Galerías San Carlos.^[1]


Desiring to broaden his artistic influences, Nieto moved to Paris in the early 1960s. Here he became friends with artists such as Julio Cortázar, Severo Toledo and José Bianco. He worked at the Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter and his discovery of the work of Edward Munch spurred an interest in wood engraving. He also worked at the lithography workshop of Michael Casse for German publisher Manus Press.In Paris away from his indigenous environment, Nieto began to re-think folk art from his native Oaxaca mainly focusing on the brightly painted hand-carved wooden animals known as alebrijes. He combined the alebrijes with the Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan comic strip stories of his childhood.

Nieto wrote: “To Burne Hogarth I dedicate, in memory of the Tarzan stories of my childhood, the series of animals I drew while I was in Switzerland, likewise the xylographs I created in Munich and Paris.”¹ Mentally Nieto took apart the structural aspect of the alebrijes and reconstructed them with the whimsy and wonderment of the Tarzan stories. This resulted not only in the Bestiario series of drawing and wood block prints, but established a style of painting that is now incorporated into the Oaxacan School. While in Paris, Nieto won the Biennale de Paris Prize for painting in 1963.^[2] He again won the Biennale de Paris Prize for painting in 1968. In 1966, Rodolfo Nieto illustrated “Manuel de zoologie fantastique” by Jorge Luis Borges.Nieto won the Bienal of Caen in 1970 and the Bienal de Menton. He returned to Mexico in 1972, stating that indigenous spirits called "nahuales" were calling him home.

In Europe Nieto had gained fame and recognition in the art world, but in Mexico he struggled despite an exhibition of his work at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1973. A sensitive man, Nieto was crushed emotionally that the Mexican art critiques refused to consider his work seriously. He met his wife, Nancy Nieto, a painter, at the grand opening of David Alfaro Siqueiros Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros in Mexico City. Nieto was invited to Siqueiros' home after the Polyforum event and asked Siqueiros if he could bring along his new friend. Siqueiros said, "Of course." But Nancy preferred to spend time alone with Nieto. Later Nancy regretted not attending Siqueiros' private party. Nancy and Nieto were wed a few months later.² The new couple developed a deep connection with art, especially Nieto's new genre of Mexican art. However, Mexico was not ready for Nieto's art. “Because Mexico rejected his art, Rodolfo went into a deep depression.”²

Rodolfo and Nancy pressed on. They painted together every day, from the morning until often late into the evening. Nancy helped Nieto stretch and gesso the canvases, sketch the major constructions lines and Nieto would finish the work. Together they created hundreds of paintings. With the frenzy of work, Nieto became exhausted and depressed. His sleeping was erratic, his mind began wondering, seeing things, speaking and acting unusual. He seemed to have an awareness of his life coming to an end. In the Mexican tradition of laughing at death with skull art he began to paint calaveras (skulls) in the Nieto tradition of mentally taking apart the structural elements only to reassemble them in a different perception. His brief life ended on June 24, 1985. One of the last things he told Nancy was “Keep my paintings. Someday they will be very valuable.” Nancy Nieto continues to paint in the Oaxacan style of Rodolfo Nieto.

In 1995, the Museo MARCO in Monterrey held a tribute to the artist to reevaluate his work.

Fernando Gamboa stated that “noise and melody, the human figure and graphic line, expression and invention, reality and fiction are all interwoven in his cavases.”(bancomer)Nieto was part of the Generación de la Ruptura and has been related to the School of Oaxaca, with works based on the myths and legends of the state. He worked in diverse techniques such as pencil, pastel and oil to mixed media and graphics. His work is semi-abstract in the realm of magical realism. While his time in Europe was important for the development of his visual language, it remained based on the colors and images of his native state. After he returned to Mexico, he studied pre Hispanic and popular art which caused him to simplify forms.

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Respect to: Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo (August 26, 1899 – June 24, 1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico.Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences. Tamayo's Zapotec heritage is often cited as an early influence. After the death of his parents, he moved to Mexico City to live with his aunt. Tamayo had no choice but to move and live with relatives in México City, México. While living with them, Tamayo was very devoted to helping his family out with a small business they owned. However, after a while Tamayo’s aunt enrolled him into an art school which was when his career as an artist began. He enrolled at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas at San Carlos in 1917 to study art.While studying, Tamayo experimented with and was influenced by Cubism, Impressionism, and Fauvism, among other popular art movements of the time, but with a distinctly Mexican feel.Although he studied drawing at Academy of Art at San Carlos as a young adult, Tamayo was very dissatisfied and eventually went to study art on his own. That was when he began working for José Vasconcelos at the Department of Ethnographic Drawings (1921), and was later appointed head of the department by Vasconcelos. Rufino Tamayo, along with other muralists such as Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros represented the twentieth century, in their native country of Mexico.[5] After the Mexican Revolution, Tamayo devoted himself to creating an identity in his work. Tamayo expressed what he believed was the traditional Mexico and did not create more overt political art like his contemporaries, such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Oswaldo Guayasamin, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He disagreed with these muralists in their belief that the revolution was necessary for the future of Mexico; Tamayo believed that since Mexicans began the revolution they were only going to get hurt by it. He expressed this belief in his painting, Children Playing with Fire (1947). In this image, Tamayo shows two individuals being burnt by a fire they have created, symbolizing the people in Mexico being hurt by its own choice.[6] Tamayo claimed that Mexico is becoming and will continue to be hurt from a war it created. Tamayo claimed, “We are in a dangerous situation, and the danger is that man may be absorbed and destroyed by what he has created”. Due to his opinion, he was seen by some as a "traitor" to the political cause, and he felt he could not freely express his art, so in 1926, he decided to leave Mexico and move to New York.[3] Prior to leaving, he organized a one-man show of his work in Mexico City, where he was noticed for his individuality.[3] Tamayo returned to Mexico in 1929 to have another solo show, this time being met with high praise and media coverage.

Rufino Tamayo’s legacy in the history of art is truly found in Tamayo’s oeuvre of original graphic prints, in which Tamayo cultivated every technique. Rufino Tamayo’s graphic work was produced between 1925 and 1991 and includes the mediums of woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and Mixografia prints. With the help of Mexican painter and engineer Luis Remba, Tamayo expanded the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the graphic arts by developing a new medium, which they named "Mixografia". The Mixografia technique is a unique fine art printing process that allows for the production of prints with three-dimensional texture.[7] The technique not only registered the texture and volume of Rufino Tamayo's design, but it also granted Tamayo the freedom to use any combination of solid materials in its creation. Rufino Tamayo was delighted with the Mixografia process, and Tamayo created some 80 original Mixographs. One of their most famous Mixografia was titled Dos Personajes Atacados por Perros (Two Characters Attacked by Dogs).[8] In 1935, Tamayo joined the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR). The LEAR was a place in which Mexican artists could express their beliefs through painting and writing towards the revolutionary war and governmental issues that were happening in México at the time. Although Tamayo did not agree with Siqueiros and Orozco, they were chosen along with four others to represent their art in the first American Artists’ Congress in New York. Now married, Rufino and Olga had planned on staying in New York for just a couple weeks while the event passed, however, they made New York their permanent home for the next decade and a half.[9] In 1948, his first major retrospective was done at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and while he was still controversial, his popularity was high. Still uncomfortable with the political differences and controversy, Tamayo and Olga moved to Paris in 1949, where he was welcomed by the artists of Europe. He remained in Paris for 10 years.[3] Tamayo is also known as someone who enjoyed portraying women in his paintings. In his early works, he portrayed many naked women, a subject which eventually disappeared in his later work. However, he also has many paintings of his wife Olga, in which he shows her struggles through color choices and facial expressions. A portrait which can help one see the struggles the two went through is seen in the painting Rufino and Olga, 1934. In this painting, both Olga and Rufino seem broken from past struggles. Tamayo also painted murals, some of which are displayed inside Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes opera house in Mexico City, such as Nacimiento de la nacionalidad (Birth of the Nationality, 1952

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Respect to: Francisco Benjamín López Toledo

Francisco Benjamín López Toledo (b. July 17, 1940, Juchitán, Oaxaca) is a Mexican graphic artist. He studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Oaxaca and the Centro Superior de Artes Aplicadas del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico, where he studied graphic arts with Guillermo Silva Santamaria.

His social and cultural concerns about his home state led to his participation in the establishment of an art library at the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO),^[1] as well as his involvement in the founding of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), the Patronato Pro-Defensa y Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural de Oaxaca, a library for the blind, a photographic center, and the Eduardo Mata Music Library. Toledo works in various media, including pottery, sculpture, weaving, graphic arts, and paintings. He has had exhibitions in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Japan, Sweden, the United States, as well as other countries.

Francisco Toledo painted his subjects as if they were x-rays. Salacious curiosity with the inner being becomes almost pornographic as his erotic and irreverent resurgence of Skull Art comes forward.

For his social and cultural commitment to the development of his home state, he received the Mexican National Prize (1998), the Prince Claus Award (2000) and the Right Livelihood Award (2005).

He is father of poet Natalia Toledo and artists Laureana Toledo and Dr Lakra

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