Anton Refregier was a Russian immigrant painter in the United States.

He made the 27 murals in the Rincon Center

Rincon Center

Rincon Center is a complex of , offices and in downtown San Francisco. The center takes up an entire block bounded by Mission, Howard, Spear and Steuart streets. There are two buildings....

 in San Francisco, California, which depict the history of California, in the style of the social realism

Social realism

Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...

.

Life and early career

Refregier was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States in 1920. After working various odd jobs, he earned a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...

 in 1921. After finishing school, Refregier moved back to New York in 1925. To earn a living, Refregier worked for interior decorators doing copies of Bouchers and Fragonards. He continued on his journey and traveled to Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 in 1927. While there he studied under Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...

, who worked in abstract expressionism.

Refregier returned to New York during the late 1920s and lived in Croton-on-Hudson's Mount Airy artists' colony. In an interview Refregier referred to this time as the most wonderful period of his life in spite of the fact that it was wonderful in a peculiar way. He was referring to the depression of the 1930s. Refregier learned a lot about life during these times. He also learned about the United States economy and government.

Refregier found inspiration in tragic events. Refregier was quoted as saying that “the richer we [were] in possessions, the poorer we became in their enjoyment.” He said the amazing part of that period was the “human quality, the humanist attitude that [everyone] had” and the discovery that “the artist was not apart from the people.”

He struggled as a muralist until the government began the Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

 (later “Works Projects Administration”, WPA) in 1936 that helped create a sponsorship for the arts. When asked about the program Refregier said that it was “by the wisdom of one of the greatest Presidents we ever had, Roosevelt, it's common knowledge the WPA, a relief program, was established [because] it was necessary to protect the skills of the American people.” Refregier received $23.86 a week on the WPA rolls.

Refregier was a faculty member and Chairman of the Board at the American Artists School

American Artists School

The American Artists School was a progressive independent art school in New York City associated with socialism and the American Radical movement.The school was founded in April 1936 at 131 West Fourteenth Street...

 from 1937-38. Refregier began to gain notoriety and was given the opportunity to choose between two assignments for his first project. The WPA gave him the option of painting a courthouse or the children's ward of a hospital. Refregier chose the children's ward because did not want to have the pressure that came with designing artwork for a courthouse. He was assigned to work on Brooklyn's Green Point Hospital. The project took a little over a year to complete and involved five other contributing artists.
After completing the hospital, Refregier's work progressed mainly to government-sponsored projects. These included the World's Fair Federal Works Buildings in the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and the Section of Fine Arts of the Public Building Administration in the Treasury Department. He also worked as a teacher, supervising artist, and mural supervisor.

Works

Refregier won many mural competitions and started to make a name for himself as a muralist. In 1940 he won the commission for his most famous work. He competed with a number of other artists for the commission, including artist Richard Haines The mural consisted of 27 panels and covered 400 square feet (37.2 m²) of wall space. The mural is formally known as the “History of San Francisco” and is located in the Rincon Post Office in San Francisco, California. Refregier painted the mural with casein

Casein

Casein is the name for a family of related phosphoprotein proteins . These proteins are commonly found in mammalian milk, making up 80% of the proteins in cow milk and between 60% and 65% of the proteins in human milk....

 tempera

Tempera

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...

 on white gesso

Gesso

Gesso is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these...

 over plaster walls.

The mural consisted of various historical events from California's past. It included the anti-Chinese Sand Lot riots, the 1934 San Francisco Waterfront Strike, and trade unionist Tom Mooney

Thomas Mooney

Thomas Joseph "Tom" Mooney was an American political activist and labor leader, who was convicted with Warren K. Billings of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916...

's trial that was based on fabricated evidence. Refregier used these tragedies as inspiration. Refregier “believed that art must address itself to contemporary issues and that a mural painting in particular must not be ‘banal, decorative embellishment,’ but a ‘meaningful, significant, powerful plastic statement based on the history and lives of the people.’”

The mural also depicted the “gold rush

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

, the building of the Union Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....

, the disastrous earthquake and fire, and into the twentieth century and a second World War, culminating in the signing of the UN charter.” Some were suspicious of Refregier because of his Russian background. None of this bothered Refregier. He was only worried about his art.

The style of the historic mural had many of Refregier's key characteristics. The palette was composed of yellows, browns, and grays punctuated by red in certain areas to evoke emotion. Earthy tones and the lack of bright colors remind viewers of the struggles and hardships he is depicting. Refregier also uses white to represent virtue in those inspired by a cause. His style is very flat and one dimensional. He uses solid blocks of color to denote shadows, along with depth and shade. His painting style appears to be very rudimentary and simple, but complex because of the way he uses color to evoke emotion and powerful images to tell a story.

The “History of San Francisco” took eight years to complete at a cost of $26,000. It created a heated debate because of the controversial events it depicted from California’s past. After all, the mural was located in a public building and Refregier was using public funds to complete it. People believed that it “placed disproportionate emphasis on violence, racial hatred, and class struggle.” Republican Senator Hubert Scudder and former President Richard Nixon were involved in a protest to have the work covered. They claimed it had a communistic tone and “defamed pioneers and reflected negatively on California's past.” Many believed that “no artist, however distinguished, escaped the heavy, if well meaning, hand of federal supervision.”

In a letter to the editor in 1952 the President of the College Art Association said that “the pro-Chinese sentiments of one section of the murals and indication of the then existing wartime alliance with Russia of another section reflected the realities of the time.” The protest was eventually defeated by a group of artists and museum directors.

After the conflict, Refregier continued to work as an artist, teacher, professor and judge for various competitions. He was a professor of painting at Bard College

Bard College

Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...

 in New York from 1962-64. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. Refregier died in 1979 while in Moscow. He was working on a mural for the medical center in his home town. Ironically, that same year his Rincon mural was placed under the protection of the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

.

External links

• Figureworks.com/20th Century work at www.figureworks.com
• Comrades in Art: Anton Refregier