Rendering of Pan American Unity in the Roberts Family Gallery at SFMOMA. Image: courtesy SFMOMA.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the City
College of San Francisco (CCSF) plan to display Diego Rivera’s historic
mural, Pan American Unity, as the cornerstone of a major
exhibition of the artist’s work at SFMOMA in 2020. The mural — one of
the most important works of public art in San Francisco — will be on
view in the museum’s Roberts Family Gallery on the street level, part of
the museum’s free, unticketed space. A comprehensive program of
conservation, public education and CCSF student internships will
accompany the exhibition of the work and will be announced in greater
detail at a later date. Early funding for these initiatives has been
provided in part by the Koret Foundation.
Diego Rivera’s The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North
and of the South on the Continent, more commonly known as Pan American
Unity, was created in 1940 as part of the Art in Action program at the
Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) on San Francisco’s Treasure
Island, where local and international artists created works of painting,
sculpture, weaving, stained glass, prints and engravings before an
audience of fairgoers.
Measuring 22 feet high and 74 feet wide (nearly
1,800 square feet) and comprised of ten fresco panels, the mural is the
largest created by Rivera and his last made in the United States. As a
result of a partnership between one of the GGIE’s commissioners and
Rivera, from its inception the mural was slated for permanent display at
what is now known as City College of San Francisco. Rich in symbolism
and imagery from across the North American continent, including Mexico,
the United States and Canada, Pan American Unity has been on view in the
Diego Rivera Theater on the main campus of City College of San
Francisco since 1961.
“SFMOMA has a long and wonderful history with Diego Rivera including
17 solo and group exhibitions,” said Neal Benezra, Helen and Charles
Schwab Director at SFMOMA. “His work, The Flower Carrier was one of the
first paintings to enter our collection as a gift from founding trustee
Albert Bender in 1935. Through his friendship with Bender, Rivera was
able to get a visa to journey to San Francisco to paint murals at the
City Club and the California School of Fine Arts [now the San Francisco
Art Institute]. Our founding director, Dr. Grace McCann Morley, provided
assistance for Rivera’s return to create Pan American Unity and we are
delighted that CCSF is willing to lend it to us as the centerpiece of
the exhibition of his work we have planned for 2020.”
“We are very grateful to SFMOMA and to Director Neal Benezra for
recognizing the significance of Diego Rivera’s masterpiece mural, Pan
American Unity. This opportunity to partner with SFMOMA is a turning
point in the eighty-two-year history of City College of San Francisco.
Sharing Pan American Unity announces both our college’s history and its
future as a guide to a more just society,” said Dr. Mark Rocha,
chancellor of City College of San Francisco. “SFMOMA and CCSF are two of
the city’s most enduring institutions in the public interest. The
transformative power of art and education will come together in this
visionary presentation of Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity.”
At the invitation of noted architect Timothy Pflueger, Vice Chair,
Fine Arts Committee, Diego Rivera came to San Francisco to participate
in the Art in Action program in the Hall of Fine and Decorative Arts
during the 1940 season of the Golden Gate International Exposition on
Treasure Island. Fairgoers were invited to watch artists create work in a
Pan Am Clipper airplane hangar converted into an artist studio and
gallery. Rivera and his assistants began work in June 1940 and completed
the mural in December, two months after the close of the Exposition.
Over 30,000 visitors viewed the mural during a preview and a public
viewing.
Pflueger was at the same time working to build the campus of San
Francisco Junior College (now City College of San Francisco). Together
he and Rivera agreed that the mural would be permanently displayed at a
new Grand Library on the college’s campus, where Rivera would work in
view of the public to triple the size of the mural. However, due to the
ban on non-essential construction during WWII and the unexpected death
of Pflueger, the proposed Grand Library was never constructed. In
addition, during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, controversy regarding
Rivera’s communist politics further delayed installation of the fresco
at the college. However, Milton Pflueger, Timothy Pflueger’s brother,
proposed to the San Francisco School Board that the mural be installed
in the foyer of the college’s new performing arts theater. He redesigned
the lobby and installed the mural, making it accessible to the public
in 1961. The building was renamed the Diego Rivera Theater in honor of
the artist in 1993.
At the conclusion of the planned SFMOMA Rivera exhibition, the mural
will return to City College of San Francisco for permanent display.
Using fresco techniques in the manner of Italian Renaissance
painters, but updating its themes and reimagining its social function,
Rivera created ten steel-framed panels allowing individual sections to
be transported and relocated. Four panels on the lower row are discrete
scenes, with the top five panels and the lower center panel forming a
continuous view featuring one of Rivera’s most dynamic montage
narratives.
“My mural will picture the fusion between the great past of the Latin
American lands, as it is deeply rooted in the soil, and the high
mechanical developments of the United States,” described Rivera. Pan
American Unity is a sweeping panorama of the Bay Area that merges with
generalized reference to the pre-Conquest cities of the Valley of Mexico
City (left side) and other scenes of Northern California (right side).
Rivera’s imagery extends from ancient civilizations (Toltec, Aztec) to
Bay Area architectural icons (the Golden Gate Bridge, 450 Sutter, 140
Montgomery St, Alcatraz). Rivera also incorporated topical events, as
well as references to his previous murals and artworks. He used scenes
from Hollywood movies such as The Great Dictator, Confessions of a Nazi
Spy and All Quiet on the Western Front to attack the tyranny of the
World War II Axis powers and subtly encourage the United States to join
the war against Germany.
The mural centers on a binational “deity” that combines the Aztec
earth goddess Coatlicue with a modern machine. Around this symbol of
ancient-modern/North-South, he depicts numerous notable contemporary and
historical figures from across the continent and across time: inventors
and their inventions (the 15th century Texcoco king Nezahualcóyotl as
well as Samuel Morse, Robert Fulton, Henry Ford), political figures both
heroic and demonic (Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Simón Bolívar,
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Adolf
Hitler), artists and architects (Frida Kahlo, sculptors Mardonio Magana
and Dudley Carter, architects Timothy Pflueger and Frank Lloyd Wright,
and Rivera himself) and actors including Paulette Goddard, Charlie
Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson. The mural also features a cross section
of ancient and everyday people including athletes, scientists, artisans
and Rivera’s assistants and visitors he met while at the GGIE.