Word: riverae
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...procession halted before a huge (63 ft. by 17 ft.) unfinished fresco on the wall facing the doors. Its bright colors and hard, compact figures filled the lobby like a parade. On scaffolding before it stood a big, drooping man with a gloomy face and sad Mexican eyes: Diego Rivera, the world's foremost living fresco painter. A guard called to Rivera to come down from his scaffold. He laid down his big brushes and the tin kitchen plate he uses for a palette, climbed nimbly down the ladder. Mr. Robertson handed him an envelop. It held a check...
...seven assistants rushed back, gibbering with indignation. Assistant Lucienne Bloch, daughter of Swiss Composer Ernest Bloch, scraped the white paint off two second-story windows to form the words: "Workers Unite," "Help! Protect Rivera M. . . ." Guards stopped her from finishing the word "Murals." By nightfall Communists began to swarm in Rockefeller Plaza, the new thoroughfare cutting through Rockefeller Center. They churned about, cheering for the man whom they had read out of their party four years ago, waving banners "Save Rivera's Painting," marching & countermarching around the RCA Building. Mounted police pranced on the outskirts, shooed them away before...
Next day newspapers splashed across their front pages the ostensible reason for all the hubbub. On May 1 (May Day), near the centre of the Fresco had appeared a small head of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s son Nelson had asked Rivera ''to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin's face now appears." Rivera had countered by offering to balance Lenin with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The Rockefellers exploded, fired Rivera...
...main panels showed the automobile industry from the mine to the assembly line at Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge plant, populated by Rivera's chunky, concentrated figures. Others showed a pharmaceutical factory (Parke, Davis & Co.), airplane welders, poison gas workers, topped in huge scale by females representing the raw materials of Detroit's industries: a white woman for limestone, black for coal, yellow for sand, red for iron ore. Critics rated the frescoes first-class, noted an increasing hardness and sharpness in Rivera's detail. Nearly overlooked was a little panel high on one wall...
Afterward Edsel Ford told newshawks: "I admire Mr. Rivera's spirit. I really believe he was trying to express his idea of the spirit of Detroit...