Shower

Many Mexican artists visited or moved to New York in the 1920s and 1930s, including José Clemente Orozco, Miguel Covarrubias, and Jesús Escobedo. After his first trip in 1927, Rufino Tamayo spent a considerable amount of time in New York. He painted Shower during the Depression, when he was one of only a few foreigners admitted into the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, a relief program for struggling artists. When the Project was later dismantled, the federal government distributed its share of artworks to museums across the country, which is how this work came to the Blanton Museum. Aside from appreciating the financial support of the Federal Art Program, Tamayo savored the freedom in New York from what he felt to be the suffocating presence of the official Muralist program in Mexico. The small scale and everyday subject matter of this work point to his interest in a more modest and introspective art. Like Orozco’s early New York scenes, Shower focuses on urban life—in this case its somewhat gloomy side. The street scene’s dark tones are far removed from the intense color and spiritual subject matter for which Tamayo would later become famous.