Diego Rivera’s Astonishing ‘Pan American Unity’ Mural At San Francisco Museum Of Fashionable Artwork

Diego Rivera, The marriage of the artistic expression of the north and the south … [+] Continent (Pan American Unity), 1940.

© Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico DF / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy City College of San Francisco.

Before Diego Rivera was Mr. Frida Khalo, Frida Khalo was Mrs. Diego Rivera. During their tumultuous relationship, Rivera was one of the most famous artists in the world. It would be nearly half a century after her death in 1954 for Khalo to be similarly exalted, and her fame now far surpassed his.

A breathtaking memento of Rivera’s talent can be seen at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the summer of 2023. The marriage of northern and southern artistic expression on the continent, better known as the Pan American Unity Mural, is on loan from the City College of San Francisco while its permanent home at the CCSF is being renovated.

Created for the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition, the mural is a living, 10-part “portable” fresco depicting a past, present, and future that the artist believed shared across North America. Completed with the assistance of local artists and assistants, using scenes from the Bay Area as a backdrop, the mural celebrates the creative spirit through portraits of artists – including Kahlo – craftsmen, architects, and inventors who use art and technology as tools to shape society.

As amazing as the mural is – 22 feet high by 74 feet wide and made up of ten frescoed panels – the move of the artwork from CCSF to SFMOMA was almost as impressive.

abstract

Atthowe Fine Art Services workers remove Pan American Unity’s central lower panel from the wall … [+] at the Diego Rivera Theater of the City College of San Francisco.

Image: Katherine Du Tiel / SFMOMA.

This exhibition is the culmination of four years of extensive research, research and preparation that brought the two institutions together as well as scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), an international team of restorers, Diego Rivera fellows and Atthowe Fine Art Services, a local Expert in art removals and rigging. These teams examined the technical, conservation and scientific requirements to move such a monumental and fragile work of art.

“Removing the first large board from the CCSF cinema wall was the most frightening thing for me,” Michelle Barger, SFMOMA’s director of conservation, told Forbes.com. “The fragile fresco, which measures just under 5 square feet and is only 1¼ inches thick, had to be cut from a 12-foot thick concrete wall and carefully removed from an impossibly tight fit with no room for error.”

The extraction of the first plaque by Atthowe Fine Art Services and Sheedy Drayage began in April 2021 and the first plaque arrived at the museum on May 2nd.

“All of this happened while the panel was suspended blindly from ropes threaded through the roof of the building and held outside by a huge crane,” added Barger.

Weighing in at over 60,000 pounds and covering nearly 1,800 square feet, the mural had been embedded in the Diego Rivera Theater at the CCSF since 1961. The masterpiece was stored 20 years earlier.

Truckin ‘

A large blackboard on Howard Street outside SFMOMA is waiting to be craned over the power cables … [+] and rolled into the museum.

Image: Katherine Du Tiel / SFMOMA.

One obstacle overcome – the safe removal of the plates from the CCSF – the next challenge was to get the huge plates to the SFMOMA, eleven kilometers away. Tractors with flatbed trailers were the answer.

Prior to shipment, two full-size replica panels were constructed and subjected to vibration and torque tests in a laboratory to create a database of stress effects on the mural. Using this data, the researchers created a system of sensors attached to the surface of the mural that enabled the UNAM team to monitor the panels in real time from the truck cab as it was being dismantled and moving through San Francisco make sure they were exposed to as little stress as possible.

The drives started at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday morning to minimize traffic.

“SFMOMA employees followed a route dictated by the city of San Francisco in their cars,” said Barger. “Due to the oversized height of the panels and the extremely low loading area – it was less than 30 cm above the ground – we had to avoid hills, MUNI bus routes and underpasses because we couldn’t clear them. Not an easy job in San Francisco! The drive usually takes less than 20 minutes by car, but it took up to two hours because we had to stay below five miles an hour to prevent vibrations from building up and causing damage. “

Tight pressure

Few buildings in the world are spacious enough to house the presentation of the works of art. The street level Roberts Family Gallery at SFMOMA, where the mural can be seen, was purposely designed to show large-format installations of contemporary art. Pan American Unity fits perfectly.

“It’s just tall and wide enough to safely install and display this massive work of art,” said Barger. “You have to have a few meters of free space for the portal system (hoist), and we only have centimeters free. Likewise, the largest wall panels simply fit into the posts (dividers) of a removed glass window. “

In the gallery, the wall panels are attached to a steel structure that offers both stability and a versatile fastening system so that Pan American Unity can be safely moved and displayed again in the future. This system is replicated when the mural is returned to the CCSF’s new Performing Arts Center.

Pan American unity

A large upper panel and a small lower panel await installation in the Roberts Family Gallery at … [+] SFMOMA.

Image: Katherine Du Tiel / SFMOMA.

“For years I have had the feeling that the true art of America must arise from the fusion of machinism and the new creative power of the north with the tradition rooted in the soil of the south, the Toltecs, Tarascans, Mayas, Incas, etc., and would like to choose that as the theme for my mural. ”Diego Rivera described his vision for the project in April 1940.

Pan American Unity offers an expansive panorama of the Bay Area that combines idealized scenes of cities before the conquest of the Valley of Mexico City (left) with depictions of the development of Northern California (right). Rivera’s imagery ranges from ancient civilizations to Bay Area architectural icons, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

At the center of the mural is a towering figure that combines a sculpture of the Aztec earth goddess Coatlicue with modern machines. Around him he depicts many notable contemporary and historical figures from all over the continent: inventors and their inventions (the ruler of Texcoco Nezahualcoyotl from the 15th, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler), artists, architects and actors.

Producing this amazing level of detail in this format remains an enormous achievement.

“With fresco painting, the clock resets itself every day and you have to finish your composition while the plaster is still wet,” explains Barger. “The ambitious scale of this mural and the limited timeframe of the summer exhibition meant Rivera had to work fast and cover large areas every day, often over four feet wide. I am overwhelmed by the complexity of his multi-layered narratives and his masterful brushwork, all of which were achieved under these very restrictive conditions. “

Rivera also included current events in the composition.

In a lower panel, he refers to scenes from Hollywood films such as The Great Dictator, Confessions of a Nazi Spy and All Quiet on the Western Front to draw attention to the growing threat posed by fascism and the United States to join World War II to encourage.

With so much eye candy, every guest is attracted to something different.

“I keep coming back to Rivera’s masterful portrayal of a woman diver soaring high above San Francisco Bay,” said Barger. “Subtle shades characterize the otherwise raw plaster of your white swimsuit.”

Pan American Unity can be visited for free at SFMOMA.