Included in this panel are the following people and scenes. Can you identify them? Which of these relate to freedom and oppression?
Alcatraz Island, site of a federal penitentiary, 1933-1963.
Treasure Island, man-made site of the Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939-1940, where Rivera painted the mural. He shows Arthur Brown Jr.’s Tower of the Sun and Pflueger’s Federal Building (the red rectangular structure).
A woman architect, modeled by Mary Anthony-forester, botanist and friend of Emmy Lou Packard.
Otto Deichmann, 1893-1964, German-born American architect who designed the Shasta-Cascade Building at the GGIE.
Frank Lloyd Wright, 1869-1959, architect who was inspired by the American prairies and who also used pre-Columbian motifs in his work.
Emmy Lou Packard, 1914-1998, Rivera’s primary assistant in the mural project, a prominent artist and social activist, who led the effort to save the Rivera inspired Rincon Annex murals in San Francisco.
Mona Hofmann’s daughter.
Joseph Stalin, 1879-1953, Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, and Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945, depicted as a trinity of tyrants emerging in a gaseous tree-like shape and surrounded by scenes from anti-fascist films. Although regarded as extreme opposites, the Communist Stalin and the fascists, Hitler and Mussolini, are here allies through the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact. Stalin holds a knife and bloody ice ax to echo a hammer and sickle emblem; the ax alludes to Stalin’s responsibility in the assassination of Trotsky. Below this image the initials “G.P.U.” (the Soviet secret police) and the word “Gestapo” (the Nazi secret police) form a cross, as if to show their common purpose. Below them a World War I soldier in a gas mask lies fallen across barbed wire.
Jack Oakie, 1903-1978, American comic actor, as “Benzini Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria,” a satire of Mussolini in Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film The Great Dictator.
The arm and hand of an aroused America (emerging from the machine) halting the forces of ruthless aggression.
Edward G. Robinson, 1893-1973, Rumanian born actor, and Francis Lederer, 1900-2000, Czech-born actor, depicted in a scene from the 1940 film Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Robinson and Lederer were also early collectors of Mexican art.
Heinrich Himmler, 1900-1945, leader of the Nazi SS, in charge of Nazi concentration camps and known for “The Final Solution.”
Charlie Chaplin, 1889-1977, in The Great Dictator, in which he portrays both Adenoid Hinkle, a satire of Hitler, and a Jewish barber. Chaplin appears in this panel several times.
