by Artist (25)
Coit Tower Murals
• The building of Coit Tower was funded through a bequest to the city of San Francisco by Elizabeth “Lilly” Coit, a wealthy eccentric who was famous for her support of the city’s fire department and infamous for her fondness for dressing in men’s clothing, attending poker games and cock fights, and staging boxing matches in her suite at the Palace Hotel. After her death in 1929, the city created two memorials in her honor: a bronze statue by Haig Patigian depicting three firefighters located in Washington Square Park (in the SFAC Civic Art Collection), and Coit Tower.
• Coit Tower was dedicated October 8th, 1933.
• Coit Tower’s murals were painted the following year in 1934.
• The murals were created under the Public Works Art Project and were the first project of the WPA.
• The Coit Tower project was inspired by the government-sponsored Mexican Mural Project of the 1920s, and intentionally reflects the style of the Diego Rivera.
• The Coit Tower project was completed under the direction of both Dr. Walter Heil, Regional Director for the Public Works Art Project, and the San Francisco Arts Commission, whose commissioners were responsible for artist selection, endorsement of all design proposals, and approval of the completed murals.
• Coit Tower contains 27 murals by 26 artists. Most of the murals were painted in the fresco buono tradition, a highly stable and colorfast medium. The murals cover approx. 3,691 square feet of wall space and make up the largest grouping of frescos in the United States.
• As reflected in Arts Commission minutes from 1934, the commissioners were insistent upon the mural project’s success as a unified whole achieved through the artists’ conformity to a consistent earth-toned palette, scale and height.
• The murals are painted in a social-realist style and reflect themes of agriculture, labor and industry, social protest and social idealism. These themes were heavily influenced by the politics at the time and were charged by the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, much of which was taking place along the docks at the foot of Telegraph Hill (where Coit Tower sits).
• In the midst of work on the murals, the Coit Tower artists staged a protest in the tower against the destruction of Diego Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural in New York, an action reflected in the newspaper headlines of Bernard Zakheim’s Library panel at the southeast corner of the building. This particular mural also references the SF Arts Commission’s effort to place a sculpture of Saint Francis by local artist Beniamino Bufano (depicted in the mural reading the headline).
• Upon final inspection of the completed murals by SFAC commissioners, the image of a hammer and sickle became the subject of debate between the commissioners and the artists. In a final compromise, the image was over-painted in exchange for the Commission’s acceptance of scattered references throughout the murals to pro-labor and Socialist publications.
• The murals were accessioned into the Arts Commission’s Civic Art Collection in 1934.
Bookmark: https://kiosk.sfartscommission.org/prt26
| Showing 1 to 25 of 27 Records |
Animal Force and Machine Force
Raymond Boynton
Fresco
Interior Mural
Library
Bernard Baruch Zakheim
Fresco
Interior Mural
City Life
Victor Arnautoff
Spero Anargyros
Victor Mikhail Arnautoff
Fresco
Interior Mural
Meat Industry
Raymond Bertrand
Fresco
Interior Mural
Sports
Edward Takeo Terada
Fresco
Interior Mural
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Children at Play
Ralph A. Chesse aka Ralph Alexander Chessé
Fresco
Interior Mural
Banking and the Law
George Harris
Fresco
Interior Mural
California
Maxine Albro
Fresco
Interior Mural
Home Life
Jane Berlandina aka Jane Clara Berlandina Howard
Egg tempera
Interior Mural
Bay Area Hills
Rinaldo Cuneo
Oil on canvas
Interior Mural
Outdoor Life
Ben F. Cunningham
Fresco
Interior Mural
Stockbroker and Scientist-Inventor
Mallette (Harold) Dean
Fresco
Interior Mural
Collegiate Sports
Parker Hall
Fresco
Interior Mural
Hunting in California
Edith Hamlin
Fresco
Interior Mural
Railroad and Shipping
William Hesthal
Fresco
Interior Mural
California Industrial Scenes
John Langley Howard
Fresco
Interior Mural
Powell Street
Lucien Labaudt
Fresco
Interior Mural
California Agricultural Industry
Gordon Langdon
Fresco
Interior Mural
San Francisco Bay, North
Jose Moya del Pino
Oil on canvas
Interior Mural
San Francisco Bay
Otis Oldfield
Oil on canvas
Interior Mural
Seabirds and Bay Area Map
Otis Oldfield
Oil on canvas
Interior Mural
Power
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
Fresco
Interior Mural
Newsgathering
Suzanne Scheuer
Fresco
Interior Mural
Industries of California
Ralph Stackpole
Fresco
Interior Mural
Department Store
Frede Vidar
Fresco
Interior Mural
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