American Progress (Rockefeller Center Lobby) - Manhattan, New York
N 40° 45.527 W 073° 58.738
18T E 586183 N 4512481
This massive 16' X 41' mural depicts three centuries of industrial progress in the United States. You will find it above the information desk in the Rockefeller Center's main lobby.
Waymark Code: WMZEM3
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 10/30/2018
Views: 2
Interestingly, this is the second mural painted here. The original artist was fired after he painted Lenin into the mural and refused to remove it. It was painted over with this subsequent mural.
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It's a famous story: In 1932, the Rockefellers commissioned the famous Mexican artist, Diego Rivera, to create a mural in the lobby of their flagship 30 Rockefeller building. Abby Rockefeller, wife of John Jr., had been a longtime fan of Rivera's; just a year earlier, the Museum of Modern Art, which she cofounded, had presented a major retrospective of his work. But as the artist neared completion of his massive Man at the Crossroads, John Jr. and his son Nelson were shocked to find an image of Lenin prominently displayed at the center of the mural. The Rockefellers demanded that he paint over the offending portrait; when Rivera refused, the Rockefellers fired him, and ultimately, had the mural destroyed. To replace it, they called on another popular muralist of the time, Spanish artist José Maria Sert. His 16-foot-high, 41-foot-long mural, American Progress, a vast allegorical scene depicting the development of America over three centuries, was the result, and remains the focal point of the building’s lobby to this day.
Sert (also known as Josep Maria Sert) was born in Barcelona in 1874, the son of an affluent textile merchant. After studying art in Rome, he moved in 1899 to Paris, where he fell in with Les Nabis, a group of influential decorative artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Éduard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. A bon vivant, he married (and later divorced to marry the young sculptress Isabelle Roussadana Mdivani) the renowned beauty, Misia Godebska, a sought-after portrait model whose salon would become a gathering place for the leading artists the time. Their close friends included the writers Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry and Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, and the designer Coco Chanel.