The Tamayo Museum reviews the evolution of the global concept in the painter's work

The Illuminated Oil (1975), by Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), presides over the first room of the exhibition The Paradoxes of Internationalism (told by the collection of the Tamayo Museum), the second part of which is also curated by the Englishwoman Kate Fowle, in collaboration with Andrea Valencia.

In the 70s of the last century, the Oaxacan painter revealed that his perspective on life changed forever in 1945, after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tamayo was already thinking about the man. facing not his world, but the infinite.

The exhibition, the first of the year for the Tamayo Museum, commemorates the 125th anniversary of the artist's birth through a look at his collection, both the original work with which the installation opened in 1981, as well as subsequent additions.

The title is based on the premise that the Tamayo is the first international museum held in Mexico and, therefore, its collection. Therefore, it was necessary to review the use of the term internationalism, because its meaning has changed over the centuries. The first time the term was used was in 1780, in Europe, to describe governance between states that became nations with their nationalisms, which caused wars, displacements and competition, explained Kowle, current curatorial director of the Hauser & Wirth gallery.

A second version of international has to do with the formation of organizations such as the United Nations or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Kowle continued. Again, in the 90s of the last century its meaning changed with the creation of a global network, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Suddenly the world is different, while the way of thinking about being international is much more interconnected by the Internet, the curator noted.

With the entry into force of the Free Trade Agreement in 1993, Mexico experienced a great internationalization of the art world. In the most recent version of the term, We share catastrophes and crises. The present exhibition works with works of art from the museum's collection that visually refer to all aspects of these stories of internationalism.
The curatorial project begins with a paradox to the extent that To the Death of Tamayo, the collection that he has formed and his way of seeing internationalism changes drastically due to the transformations that are taking place in the world. So the Tamayo Museum now operates in a very different international society than the one its benefactor imagined most of her life, Fowle said.

The first section of the exhibition includes a video in which Manthia Diawara, from Mali, interviews the philosopher Edouard Glissant, from Martinique, who talks about globality. That is, instead of thinking about the world in terms of a series of differences between people, think about multiplicity and the many ways of living at the same time.

The second core of the exhibition, about how to understand the world from the perspective of the other, reproduces on the wall a large map made by the surrealists in 1929, which shows the majority of imperialist countries, especially the English-speaking ones, which were eliminated. to create an ideal world.

This second room includes Pronosticador (1985), a painting by Robert Rauschenberg, belonging to the Televisa collection, which the American painter made for the people of Mexico. His 1985 exhibition at the Tamayo Museum was part of the Rauschenberg Cultural Initiative Abroad, which began in Mexico. Also on display are a series of contacts from photographs taken during his visit here, from the Rauschenberg Foundation, shown for the first time.

The last section of the exhibition revolves around Our contemporary problems that are global, such as climate change, displacement and migration. Many of the works presented here entered the collection after Tamayo's death. It also includes a commission made by the French Julia Rometti, mounted on a generally closed terrace.

"Unbelievable," Fowle responds when she asks The Day about her first impression of seeing the museum's permanent collection. It is seeing works that Tamayo collected from his artistic perspective. Her first-hand knowledge of him as an artist about who could be important both in the United States and Europe, but also in Latin America, makes her unique, the curator assured.

The paradoxes of internationalism (told by the collection of the Tamayo Museum) Closes on August 23 at the Tamayo Museum (Paseo de la Reforma 51, Bosque de Chapultepec).