Attributed to Rufino Tamayo, it does not have a COA. Medium: mixed media paper, nice details, 18.5 x 15 inches. Provenance: private owner.

Biography: Rufino Tamayo's legacy to the history of art is of a painter who has developed an individual aesthetic syntax and a graphic artist who has developed one of the most abundant repositories of formal and symbolic resources. A virtuoso in the classical techniques and an innovator in the field of illustration, Tamayo ingeniously resolved challenges he set in his graphic works, which formed a body of work on a level with his painting.Rufino del Carmen Arellanes Tamayo, born in Oaxaca on August 26, 1899, was one of the main artists to define modernity in Mexican painting. After working intermittently more than 25 years in the United States and Europe, he returned to Mexico in 1964, where he founded two museums, one of pre-Hispanic art in the city of Oaxaca, and another of contemporary art in Mexico City.Tamayo was primarily a painter and, although his easel work is predominant, he also painted murals, was an excellent draftsman, and had a keen interest in the graphic arts, in which he cultivated every technique. With the Mexican painter and engineer Luis Remba, Tamayo expanded the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the graphic arts by creating a new genre of limited edition printing, which they named Mixografia.Tamayo's graphic work was produced between 1925 and 1991. It includes the mediums of woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and mixografia prints. The beginning of Tamayo's long, important career in graphic art was almost parallel with that of his painting, beginning in the second half of the 1920s. It was then that he decided to forget what he learned at the Escuela Nacionale de Bellas Artes, and practiced woodcuts, to "harden his grip". The woodcut exercise was Tamayo's integration into modernity, nourished by popular Mexican elements and expressed in rural and religious idioms. Tamayo recalled that in 1921, when he worked in drawing for the Ethnographic Department of the National Museum of Archeology, he had the opportunity to discover the aesthetic values of pre-Hispanic sculpture created by different ethnic groups, as well as some of the expressions of the popular art of Mexico, both periods valued for their vitality, originality of form and creative freedom.Added to these rich and complex elements was Tamayo's interest in what was being created by the European Expressionist painters. The result was a group of graphic works that revealed a personal style and iconographic novelty that enriched and renovated his visual design. The energetic drawing in lines of varying thickness and rhythm, and the contrasts between the whites of the paper and the blacks in the printing inks gave an individualized character to the artist's work that was soon recognized by American and Mexican collectors, and gallery owners who included it in many exhibitions.Throughout Tamayo's seventy year career, the human body, especially the female, was an object of constant aesthetic reflection. This resulted in an extensive gallery of female nudes on canvas and in some of his most renowned graphic works. Tamayo was known for taking an elementary object and filling it with structural elements, textures and colors obtaining striking etchings, lithographs and mixographs created with eloquent and economical expression. Most of the compositions in his graphics are extremely simple yet highly inventive in their technicality.Rufino Tamayo was one of the first artists in Latin America to interpret his roots without historicism, anecdote, or proclamation. He used purely plastic elements of decidedly local origin, universalizing them to accomplish works of unparalleled beauty and quality. In doing so, he formed one of the most brilliant chapters of the already rich and prestigious field of graphic work in Mexico. Tamayo died on June 24, 1991 in Mexico City of an acute stroke.In 2003, Elizabeth Gibson found a painting in the trash on a New York City curb. Although she knew little about modern art, Gibson felt the painting "had power" and took it without knowing its origin or value. She spent four years trying to learn about the artwork, eventually learning from the PBS website that it had been featured on an episode of Antiques Roadshow. The 1970 Tamayo painting was called Tres Personajes and was bought by a Houston man as a gift for his wife. In 1987 the painting was stolen from the couple's storage locker during a move. After seeing the Missing Masterpieces segment about Tres Personajes, Gibson and the former owner eventually arranged to sell the painting at a Sotheby's auction. In November, 2007 Gibson received a $15,000 reward plus a portion of the $1,049,000 auction sales price.

All authorship of items in this catalog are described according to the following terms:

Signed [Artist Name] : In cases in which the signature is legible in the lot, this work is described as-is with no attributions given.

By [Artist Name] : The work is by the artist.

Attributed to [Artist Name] : The work may be ascribed to the artist on the basis of style, but there may be some question as to actual authorship.

In the manner of [Artist Name] : The work was executed by an unknown hand, but was designed deliberately to emulate the style of the artist.

After [Artist Name] : The work was executed by an unknown hand, but is a deliberate copy of a known work by the artist.

Circle of [Artist Name] : A work of the period of the artist showing his influence, closely associated with the artist but not necessarily his pupil.

Follower of [Artist Name]: A work by a pupil or a follower of the artist (not necessarily a pupil).

American, 19th century: This work was executed by an unknown hand, and can only be identified by origin (i.e., region, period).

Mint