6.5.16

The Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, San Francisco was built in 1933 by socialite Lillie Hitchcock Coit. The photo is taken on an overcast, almost typically foggy morning from the ferry to Sausalito. The closer picture below is from a visit to the tower.

The Social Realist murals inside the tower were made for the Public Works of Art Project during the 1930s depression.( there are a few more photos of them at the end of the post).

One of them, Diego Rivera's 'Man at the Crossroads' mural, was destroyed by its Rockefeller Centre patrons because Rivera included an image of Lenin. The Coit Tower muralists protested, picketing the tower. Sympathy for Rivera led some artists to incorporate references to the Rivera incident; in Zakheim's Library panel, one of the muralists, Ralph Stackpole, is painted reading a newspaper headline announcing the destruction of Rivera's mural.


There are many more murals - this is a very small sample -





as usual, click on the images to enlarge them



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