1896-1979
Theme/Style – Social Realism, Regionalism, landscapes
Media – Oils, murals, lithography, mosaic murals
Artistic Focus – Victor Arnautoff created paintings and watercolor works, focusing on portraits, still lifes and rural landscapes in his early years, and moved to more socially conscious themes later in his career
Career Highlights –
- He came to America through China, bringing his wife and children with him, and studied at the California School of Fine Arts before going to Mexico. There he worked as an assistant to muralist Diego Rivera.
- As project director and one of the artists selected to create the famed Coit Tower murals, Victor Arnautoff played a key role in determining the political and social content of the frescoes painted in the San Francisco landmark. His own contribution, City Life, appears to be a lively, non-political melding of downtown San Francisco scenes; however, closer study reveals two leftist newspapers on the newsstand, while the city’s most mainstream daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, is strangely missing.
- Painted frescoes in the Military Chapel at San Francisco’s Presidio, in the Anne Bremer Library of the San Francisco Art Institute, and in high schools and other buildings in the Bay Area.
- Taught art at Stanford University from 1939 until his retirement in 1963 after which he returned to Russia, where he lived out his life.
Selection of Works by this Artist
Bathers
Proposition 18
Bibliographic references are available upon request.