Shopping for art is the pastime of choice in Oaxaca, birthplace of the late Rufino Tamayo and, some people will tell you, the most artistic city in the republic. Oaxaca must have more galleries per capita than any city this south of San Miguel de Allende.
“But there is a difference,” says Peter Maxwell, the transplanted Briton who formerly managed the Hotel Camino Real housed in what had been a convent. “The art here is better.”
A city noted for the ethnic diversity of its native peoples, its creative tradition stretches back 2,500 years. It is etched into hoary temple walls at the ruins of Monte Albán and in the geometric motifs decorating pre-Hispanic structures at Mitla. The gilded altar at the 16th Century Church of Santo Domingo scintillates. Jewelry discovered in a Monte Albán is displayed at the Oaxaca Regional Museum.
Archaeology may be the reason for the first trip. The Zapotec/Mixtec ruins at Monte Alban and Mitla astound and mystify. Jewelry from one tomb at Monte Alban rival anything found beneath the Pyramids of Egypt. These treasures are on display in the Regional Museum, part of the former Santo Domingo monastery. Santo Domingo, is another ancient ruin lovingly restored. It had been a cavalry barracks for a time.
To every side of Santo Domingo – or so it seems – stand art galleries. Other places in Mexico, San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Vallarta come to mind, brag about being art centers. Oaxaca has no need to brag. This land gave the world the late Rufino Tamayo and Rafael Morales plus the very much alive, ever dynamic Francisco Toledo.
Pre-Hispanic art in this region motivated Tamayo as it did many of Oaxaca’s native sons. Born in 1899 Tamayo, died in 1991, the last of a generation that included Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros. Tamayo, as one observer put it, “Nonetheless shunned the clichés of ethnic art in favor of avante garde experimentation. The colors of his palette resonate with ripe oranges, terra cotta clay pots and sparse white cottages.”
By the end of his life Tamayo was considered the most outstanding painter in Latin America, leading the region into a new era of worldwide acceptance with retrospectives in Moscow, Leningrad and Oslo.
“Prehispanic art has been my fountain of inspiration,” Tamayo once said. “My goal is to introduce fresh aspects based on the work of the ancients.” His paintings can be seen at nearly 50 museums around the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo to the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris.
Tamayo’s successor in what might be called the Oaxaca school, Francisco Toledo, unlike his mentor, is modest and self-effacing, yet wise enough to keep his production limited.
A skilled draftsman and magnificent colorist, Toledo produces work that has been described as more magical than surrealistic, or “mature infantilism,” as one critic phrased it. A portrait of a cat in lingerie or a gouache on paper of frogs playing tennis were among his pieces shown in two group shows at New York City galleries last summer.
“I always have had my own style, which I have managed to preserve,” Toledo, 59, said in a recent interview. His works sell in the 200,000-dollar range. Toledo, occasionally can be seen relaxing at the art museum café, a handsome man of craggy mien wearing the white cotton work clothes favored by Oaxaca laborers.
Visitors with pesos to spend instead of dollars will find any number of eager young painters of the Oaxaca school with work ready to sell. Younger than Toledo and Morales, they are, as both men readily concede, in the same class. “I only recently moved out of the starving artist class myself,” Morales has said. “I hope others will be able to follow my example.”
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