Museo Tamayo traces the Paris years of Oaxacan artists Rufino Tamayo, Rodolfo Nieto and Francisco Toledo

The Museo Tamayo in Mexico City is presenting 'Tamayo, Nieto, Toledo. The Paris Years', an exhibition about three artists from Oaxaca – Rufino Tamayo, Rodolfo Nieto and Francisco Toledo – who each spent periods living in Paris in the second half of the 20th century. Curated by Juan Carlos Pereda, the show runs until 15 February 2027.

According to the museum, it was in Paris that the three combined pre-Hispanic aesthetics and popular art with the international avant-gardes, and there that they achieved their first recognition outside Mexico, away from the protection of the state. Their output there spanned painting, drawing, printmaking and collage, often made in dialogue with other artists, writers and print workshops. The exhibition also highlights Tamayo's role as a guide for several generations of artists. When they returned home with established reputations, the museum argues, their standing contributed to the decline of the nationalist canon that had dominated Mexican art for more than half a century.

Tamayo (1899–1991) moved to Paris in 1950 and lived there for ten years; in 1952 he made colour lithographs and illustrated books including Benjamin Péret's 'Air mexicain'. Nieto (1936–1985) illustrated the French edition of Jorge Luis Borges's book of imaginary beings in 1957, lived between Mexico and Paris from 1964 to 1968, showed at the Galerie de France in 1964 and 1967 and returned to Mexico in 1969. Toledo (1940–2019), born in Juchitán, worked at Atelier 17 and exhibited with Galerie Karl Flinker during his first stay in Paris before returning to Mexico in 1965, after which he travelled intermittently to France and Spain. The curatorial text also notes that his work was written about by André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Henry Miller.