San Francisco City College’s “Pan American Unity Mural” is Diego Rivera’s largest contiguous work of art.
It’s sprawling in size AND content. There are images of Yaqui Deer Dancers and early California gold miners, heavy engines of the industrial age, and front and center is Frida Kahlo — who remarried Rivera in San Francisco while he completed the work.
William Maynez is one of the mural’s historian at the college. He says Rivera started the mural as both a bridge between cultures and a comment on the duality of art and science.
“In the center of the mural you have an emblem which is basically a hood ornament for the whole thing” says Maynez. “Half of it is a stamping machine that Rivera previously painted for the Fords in Detroit. And on the other half is an Aztec goddess Coatlicue. It speaks to dualities … to yin and yang.”
This mural was originally painted on Treasure Island and was intended for City College from the start. But the college building to house the mural was never built. World War II had started and steel and concrete were scarce.
So the mural was put in storage until 1961 when the college brought it out to hang in the entryway of the student theater.