Visible to the public for only a matter of months in the 1930s, Siqueiros' mural will be seen again in 2009, when the restoration is complete. (Getty Conservation Institute)

In 1932, David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the 20th century's most influential Mexican muralists, painted a mural on the side of a building in Los Angeles that would ignite the beginnings of an international mural movement.

The 80-by-18 foot fresco "La America Tropical," on the second-story wall of the Italian Hall on Olvera Street in El Pueblo de Los Angeles, caught the City of Angels up in a controversy that ended with the mural being covered in whitewash just months after completion.

For the next half century, the covered mural languished in the shadows cast by postmodern architecture, trendsetting art and design, and a rapidly growing population. Thirty years ago, its whitewash began to erode.

When a group of artists brought the mural to the attention of the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio R. Villaraigosa, he became an enthusiastic proponent of the mural's conservation, which is under way now. "I was astounded. This great piece of art had been covered up and reduced to a junkyard heap."

The mural in 1932 and today (Bart Bartholomew, Getty Conservation Institute)

Old Los Angeles

Located near the Los Angeles River, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the birthplace of the City of Angels, is the original site where 44 settlers founded the city in 1781. Although nothing remains of the original pueblo today, the area has 27 historic buildings, five museums, and the world-famous Olvera Street. It also includes the oldest existing house in city, the Avila Adobe, built in 1818.

When muralist and activist Siqueiros came to Los Angeles from Mexico in 1932, he entered on a six-month visa to teach at the Art School of Chouinard. During his short stay, he painted three murals, the most famous, "La America Tropical," commissioned by the building's owner, who felt a sleepy Mexican village scene would be good for business.

When the scaffolding came down and the work was unveiled, onlookers were shocked. The fresco criticized America's imperialism and spoke to the exploitation of the Mexican worker, without the bucolic scenery.

Painted during the depression, it illustrates a Meso-America landscape with tropical vegetation. The centerpiece of the work shows a crucified Mexican Indian with two sharpshooters aiming at the American eagle over his head set against a Mayan pyramid.

So unpopular was the mural that officials refused to renew Siqueiros' visa. He was required to leave the country.

"The mural by Siqueiros was the first work done on a public wall," says Judy Baca, founder and artist director of Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, Calif., and senior professor at UCLA in Chicano Studies. "It's a landmark piece and a milestone for the Chicano movement."

Within weeks of completion, the right one-third of the mural visible from Olvera Street was shrouded in whitewash, and a year later the entire painting had been secreted away.

Sometime during the 1970s, Baca says, the whitewash began to flake away, exposing more of the image beneath. People began to notice the work, the only surviving public mural by Siqueiros in this country.

At work on the mural project (Getty Conservation Institute)

Rescuing the Mural

In 1988, the Getty Conservation Institute became interested in the mural as a unique piece of art history and as a spokespiece for the mural movement in particular.

Kristin Kelly, assistant director at the Getty Conservation Institute and art historian, says when she became involved in the conservation of the mural, progress was slow because of the institute's questions about what direction to take and how to move forward. Later the institute entering into a partnership with the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a department of the City of Los Angeles, to conserve the mural.

"The Getty has done conservation cleaning and stabilization of the mural's surface, and we're committed, once the project is finished, to monitoring the mural's status for a number of years after projected completion in 2009," Kelly explains.

In addition, the institute carried out a preliminary analysis of the paint that remained on the surface of the mural. Over the next few years consultants performed the first phase of the extensive job of conservation. In 1994, through the use of digital imaging, the entire mural was documented.

Nevertheless, the effort hit a roadblock. The funds the Getty had allocated for the mural's conservation appeared to be in jeopardy. So the city stepped in.

"We provided the matching funds to make the project a reality," Mayor Villaraigosa says. "Today it's an opportunity for Los Angeles to reaffirm its commitment to public murals and great art."

Funding for the project comes from the Getty, with $3.95 million, the city of Los Angeles budgeting $3.75 million, and undisclosed funds from the Norton Family Foundation and Friends of Heritage Preservation.

Echoing the mayor's feeling, Rushmore Cervantes, former general manager of the El Pueblo historical monument and presently the chief deputy controller for the city says, "To have this mural here in our own backyard is certainly something the city wanted to get involved in," Cervantes says.

In the works is an interpretive center to be housed in an adjoining building that will narrate the story of the artist, and discuss censorship, the muralist movement and the story of art. "Part of what is called for is a protective awning, a walkway, and the viewing platform," Cervantes says.

The mural in 2002 (GCI)

Roots of the Mural Movement

Tim Drescher, co-director of Rescue Public Murals, Berkeley, Calif., says he was attracted to the mural movement by the combination of art and politics that murals exemplify.

"In the early years of the mural movement," Drescher says, "murals were one of few places working people, poor people, ethnic people could talk about topics important to them."

In 2003, Rescue Public Murals formed with one goal in mind: to save a significant element of accessible civic art. "Community murals offer an acrylic memory of the history of people often overlooked in official histories," says Drescher.

Baca, who wrote the book The Birth of a Movement, about the Siqueiros' murals, has been a long-time advocate for the conservation of this mural. She developed the first mural program in the city in the early 1970s. From those modest beginnings, the Social and Public Art Resource Center came into existence. Today, each of these groups faces a ticking clock.

"It's clear to me that some of the classics of the early mural movement are in need of conservation if they are going to survive," Drescher says. "It's now or never."

Judith A. Stock is a writer in Los Angeles.

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