Life of Washington (murals)

Artist: Victor Arnautoff

Year: 1936

Date of Action: February 2020

Region: North America

Location: San Francisco, CA

Subject: Political/Economic/Social Opinion

Medium: Public Art, Public Art

Confronting Bodies: San Francisco Board of Education

Description of Artwork: “Life of Washington”, painted in fresco and measuring 1600 square feet, are thirteen fresco panels on the life of George Washington painted by Russian-American painter and professor of art Victor Arnautoff in 1936 at the newly built George Washington High School in San Francisco. They they depict George Washington in both real and imagined scenarios in his life. Funded by the WPA’s Federal Art Project, it was Arnautoff’s largest New Deal commission and one of the largest ensembles of New Deal artworks in a single site. The artist presented them as a counter-narrative to high school history texts of the time that aggrandized Washington, depicting his dependence on slave labor. Washington’s belief in Manifest Destiny and his role in westward expansion and the “march of the white race” (in Arnautoff’s words) is depicted over the body of dead Native American.

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Source: Photo: Amanda Law "Photo" has not been listed as valid URI scheme., via https://www.donnagraves.org/blog/2018/2/27/citywide-historic-context-for-new-deal-san-francisco "via https" has not been listed as valid URI scheme.