
Cabeza con rojo
1970
Rufino Tamayo's 1970 abstract composition combines oil and sand on canvas to create a textured head form dominated by red tones. The mixed media technique creates a distinctive surface quality that emphasizes the artist's exploration of color and materiality.
- Medium
- oil and sand on canvas
- Location
- Sotheby's, New York, NY
- Spotted At
- Auction House · Sotheby'sView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Modern Day Auction
May 17, 2023
Estimate: $70,000 to $90,000
Lot 544
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Artists in conversation

José Clemente Orozco
Mexican · b. 1883

Orozco shared Tamayo's interest in bold expressive heads and figurative abstraction with intense emotional color, particularly in his use of deep reds and earthy tones to convey raw human form and modernist sensibility within a Mexican artistic tradition.

Jean Dubuffet
French · b. 1901

Dubuffet similarly incorporated sand and mixed materials into painted surfaces to create heavily textured compositions of abstracted head forms, sharing Tamayo's preoccupation with materiality and the expressive potential of rough impasto surfaces.
Antoni Tàpies
Spanish · b. 1923
Tàpies built richly textured canvases using sand, pigment, and mixed media to create abstract figurative works with a similarly tactile and elemental surface quality, aligning closely with Tamayo's exploration of materiality and chromatic intensity in this piece.
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