Y el humo del tormento de ellos surgirá

Tamayo illustrated three books, among them "Apocalypse de Saint Jean" (1959), a fifteen-print portfolio to which the present lithograph belongs. Made during a stay in Paris, it describes a New Testament passage that suggests the eternal punishments of hell: “And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name” (Revelation 14:11). Tamayo portrays this harrowing vision in a comma-shaped flash of color, fronted by a devilish, multi-headed figure that curls against painterly waves of purple and star-flecked black pigment. The reaches of human suffering and sadness preoccupied Tamayo in the postwar years, manifested in images that encompass Promethean fire—the subject of major murals in Paris and Puerto Rico—and Biblical apocalypse, rendered stunningly here in a blazing inferno.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and written by Abigail McEwen.