In 1982, Rufino Tamayo founded the Biennial aiming to highlight the state of painting and creating a collection for his home state of Oaxaca. Over the course of more than four decades, this contest has established itself as an important space for contemporary pictorial creation in Mexico. From the extensive roster of participants across its past editions, several artists have gained significant recognition beyond Mexico, in tune with Tamayo’s vision, who sought to build a collection and legacy with an international scope.

The jury of the twentieth edition was composed of Tobias Ostrander, Paulina Ascencio, Víctor Palacios, Berta Kolteniuk y Lucía Vidales, who selected 40 works, first presented at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo y de las Culturas Oaxaqueñas last August.

Museo Tamayo is the second venue for this selection, which seeks to promote a creative dialogue that reaffirms the vitality of this discipline and underscores its commitment to promoting research and disseminating experimentation in local painting, in dialogue with the national scene, to shape a diverse pictorial landscape that expresses constant evolution.

These works propose a journey through an expanded field, where the conceptual and the technical intertwine and address personal and collective memories, transformed landscapes, historical tensions, social and ecological concerns, and formal explorations that oscillate between the figurative and the abstract, connected with situated investigations, from the territorial and the political to the intimate and the sensorial. Each piece acts as a node within a network of critical and analytical perspectives on the present, creating a plural space open to multiple interpretations and resonances.

The collaboration between Secretaría de Cultura del Gobierno de México, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, through Museo Tamayo, with Secretaría de las Culturas y Artes del estado de Oaxaca and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo y de las Culturas Oaxaqueñas, has ensured continuity to Rufino Tamayo’s legacy and the Biennial as a timely event within the national artistic scene.

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Selection

Adrián Guerrero
Álvaro Verduzco
Andrea Romero Guerrero
Aníbal Torija
Circe Irasema Manzano Valenzuela
Cristo Contel
Eduardo Mejorada
Esteban Daniel Pérez Martínez
Franklin Moreno Collao
Gabriel Garcilazo
Gabriel Iván Hernández García
Gabriela Lobato Ramos
Lucas de la Garza Collado (GC Lucas)
Jaime Gil
Jorge González Velázquez
José Alejandro Osorio Flores
Juliana Rojas Gutiérrez
Julio Chávez Guerrero
Karla Leyva
Luis Rodrigo Medina Caraballo
Marco Antonio López Valenzuela
María Cerdá Acebrón
Matías Solar
Mónica Isabel Martínez Romero
Oscar García Benítez
Sebastián Domínguez Narinián
Sebastien Dosantos Capouet
Sergio Ezequiel Flores Moreno
Shelly Sarfati
Víctor Guadalajara

Winners‍

Othiana Roffiel Sánchez
José González García Muñoz
Javier Peláez

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Honorable mentions

Daniela Ramírez González
Francisco Muñoz Pérez
Laura Meza Orozco
Octavio Moctezuma
Urmeer