Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Book S) by Anthony W. Lee - 1999

University of California Press, 1999. First Edition . Illustrated Wraps. Near Fine/No Jacket as Issued. A crisp, clean Near Fine copy with a trace of shelf-rubbing. Copy of period review laid in. 264 pp., profusely illustrated, endnotes and index. The boldly political mural projects of Diego Rivera and other leftist artists in San Francisco during the 1930's and early 1940s are the focus of Anthony W. Lee's fascinating book. Led by Rivera, these painters used murals as a vehicle to reject the economic and political status quo and to give visible form to labor and radical ideologies, including Communism. Several murals, and details of others, are reproduced here for the first time. Of special interest are works by Rivera that chart a progress from mural paintings commissioned for private spaces to those produced as a public act in a public space: Allegory of California, painted in 1930-31 at the Stock Exchange Lunch Club; Making a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City, done a few months later at the California School of Fine Arts; and Pan American Unity, painted in 1940 for the Golden Gate International Exposition.