… a sweeping synthesis of the art, religion, history, politics, and technology of the Americas that is as timely now as it was eighty years ago.
Diego Rivera is internationally acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s most important muralists and influential artists. Rivera’s style is a unique synthesis of European painting, socialist ideals, and the cultural riches of pre-Columbian indigenous Mexico.
He gave the people of the San Francisco Bay Area an extraordinary work of Pan-American art and an inspiring vision of Pan-American Unity. His grand, 22′ high and 74′ long, mural is entitled “Unión de la Expresión Artistica del Norte y del Sur de este Continente” (The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on this Continent). It is a sweeping synthesis of the art, religion, history, politics, and technology of the Americas that is as timely now as it was eighty years ago.
Rivera was commissioned to paint this large-scale fresco, now commonly called Pan American Unity, as part of the 1940 season of the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. It was the centerpiece of Art in Action, an innovative exhibit where fairgoers could watch artists create their work.
The mural includes three self-portraits and a portrait of his wife, artist Frida Kahlo. It is a unique combination of an artist in his prime and a critical moment in world history gathered on a monumental scale. It is arguably the most important work of art created in the Bay Area.
Since the mural was always intended to be placed in the new library of San Francisco Junior College (now City College of San Francisco), it was painted on panels, which could be transported over the Bay Bridge in a vertical orientation. It would form the center third of a work meant to be three times as long. The other two thirds would be painted on site. This library was part of a grand architectural plan developed by Timothy Pflueger, a prominent local architect, one of the organizers of the fair, and Rivera’s patron and friend.
World War Two interrupted these plans. Pflueger’s library was not built and the ten panels of the mural were crated and stored first on the fairgrounds and then at the College. Shortly after WWII Timothy Pflueger died after a swim at the Olympic Club. Upon Rivera’s death in 1957, architect Milton Pflueger, Timothy’s younger brother, proposed to install the mural in the lobby of the new campus theater he was designing. The mural was installed in 1961.
Though, originally contracted to be three panels wide, Rivera soon decided to make it five panels wide. This full-scale sinopia mural drawing on the Portland cement substrate was unveiled on July 25, 1940 for the Board of Education’s approval, prior to painting. When the scaffolding was re-erected, Rivera began working and added Timothy Pflueger, Mona Hofmann’s daughter, and the murder weapon in Stalin’s hand. He painted the masterpiece in four months, but finished it on November 29, two months after the GGIE closed, due to having expanded the work.