Source: WTL research files.
Fresco: "Frozen Assets" (1931).
Comments: According to Alicia Azuela (Diego Rivera, 1986, p. 125), "1930 was crucial in the carer of Diego Rivera for it was then that he began the first of seven murals in the United States, all but one inspired by that country's industrial society [... His desire was to] create an art that would treat the machine as both an æsthetic object and a generating force in the process of social change." What you see here is the central painting in a series of seven movable panels shown in a retropective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA, NY) in 1931. This panel—a fresco on reinforced steel concrete—shows the grayness of New York City after two years of the Great Depression. On the bottom is a bank vault; in the center are the countless workers' bodies entombed in a bleak warehouse; and the top part shows the lifeless skyscrapers above the surface.