During a 1964 stint at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, Tamayo created a group of prints based loosely on the human form. In these works, he distilled the human body down to stark, linear arrangements of color and line, resulting in compositions that evoke Paleolithic cave paintings.

In Personage in a Cave, Tamayo’s figure gazes directly at the viewer, hands clasped and surrounded by a thick blue-gray halo. Above and to the right, bright pinks and splattered grays suggest a weathered stone surface, as if the mysterious figure had been scrawled on a cavern wall. During the 1940s, Tamayo had created apocalyptic paintings in response to World War II using imagery drawn from Mesoamerican cultures to respond to the horrors of the conflict. With this work, created years later amid the escalation of the Cold War, Tamayo’s subterranean figure speaks to fears of nuclear annihilation.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)