Dos niñas mexicanas [Two Mexican Girls]

Best known as a painter, Rufino Tamayo was also one of Mexico’s most prolific printmakers. In 1921, the artist worked at the Department of Ethnographic Drawings at the National Museum of Archaeology with José Vasconcelos, then Mexico’s secretary of education. At the time, Vasconcelos advocated a re-envisioning of Mexico’s national identity through a blending of contemporary indigenous culture with pre-Columbian and post-conquest cultural elements. This early woodcut can be seen as Tamayo’s response to Vasconcelos’s ideas. Likely drawn from the artist’s own Zapotec heritage in his home state of Oaxaca, "Dos niñas mexicanas" features two figures standing next to a maguey plant, which is central to the agriculture and identity of the area. Tamayo’s uniform stylistic treatment of both the people and the landscape, suggests their underlying connectedness.