Rufino Tamayo was born in 1899 in Oaxaca, México. He moved to New York in the early 1940´s where he lived for 20 years before relocating permanently to his home country. He worked in the medium of painting, drawing and printing and creating a distinctive and personal iconography by combining elements of the international avant garde along with features of Pre-Hispanic art. His signature style was established through a chromatic exploration conducted during a career span of seventy years, which led to the consolidation of a wide and bright colour scheme. Even though he initially painted still life and urban landscapes influenced by cubism, his work took on a lyric and symbolic dimension whilst exploring new subjects such as erotica. Tamayo did not adhere to the political radicalism commonly expressed by the work of contemporary Mexican painters of the time, though it did not prevent him completing eight murals with political and social content in the 1950´s, including El nacimiento de nuestra nacionalidad, México de hoy y Homenaje a la raza india. His work has been acquired by MOMA, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Tamayo died in 1991 in Ciudad de México at the age of 92.