"Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and almost immediately the Left press in the United States began to publish cartoons hostile to his regime. But throughout the decade barely a handful of artists, whatever their political preferences, addressed the increasingly virulent outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Germany. The few who did include the Mexican Diego Rivera (1886-1957), and the Jewish Americans Ben Shahn (1898-1969) and Max Weber (1881-1961). Rivera, one of the first to respond, included an anti-Semitic episode in a mural panel painted toward the end of 1933 in the didactic manner he used at that time. It was the "Hitler" panel, one of twenty-one that comprised his Portrait of America, made for the New Workers' School in New York City. Rivera supported himself while completing the panels with funds he had received for his ill-fated mural for the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, Man at the Crossroads Looking with Uncertainty but with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a Course Leading to a New and Better Future, which was destroyed in 1933 because it included, among other scenes, a portrait of Lenin."
Diego Rivera

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English