The Day and the Night

Look at the surface. Tamayo built up his paint with sand and other materials so that it has a gritty, almost stony texture, and the colours seem to come from inside the wall rather than from a brush. The figures are flat and simplified, with heads like masks, and they owe as much to pre Hispanic sculpture and to Picasso as to any Mexican tradition. The sun and the moon are painted as discs of pure pigment. Notice the way the composition is split down the middle yet held together by the horizon, so that day and night are two halves of one world.

The mural was made for a private commission and later entered the Soumaya collection, where it now hangs in the vestibule near Rivera's mosaic and a still life by the same artist, so that two giants of Mexican art share the entrance hall. Tamayo lived until 1991 and left museums of his own in Oaxaca and Mexico City, but this work shows him in the 1950s, at the height of his international fame, when he divided his time between New York, Paris and Mexico. It matters as a reminder that Mexican modernism was not only about politics but also about myth and colour. The memorable detail is the moon, a cold blue circle that seems to hum against the warm half of the wall.

Did You Know? Tamayo mixed sand into his paint to give his surfaces a rough, stony texture that looks like weathered stone.