dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
künstler: Diego Rivera
titel: Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees
jahr: 1931
+: Movable Fresco on metallic structure, 1.60 x 2.65 m
Stern Hall is an all-female residence hall at the University of California, Berkeley. It was built in 1942 by William Wurster (1895—1973) on a $258,000 grant from Rosalie Meyer Stern, widow of Sigmund Stern, class of 1879. It is the sister hall to Bowles Hall, the all-male residence on campus. The Hall was first opened for 90 undergraduate women; currently it houses approximately 267.
There are extensive materials on Stern Hall at the College of Environmental Design Archives (CED Archives) in Wurster Hall. Among these are early architectural and site design sketches, architectural drawings including some details, specifications, photographs and correspondence (1939 to 1942, and 1958) in the William Wilson Wurster papers and the Wurster, Bernardi, and Emmons (WBE) office files. Also, included in the collection is correspondence and specifications for the installation of the Diego Rivera mural.
The mural was moved to Stern Hall from the Atherton home of Rosalie Stern in 1956, following her death. Rivera had painted the fresco in a similar shallow niche at the Stern’s home during the Spring of 1931 when Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, were houseguests of Rosalie Stern. Rivera had recently completed a large mural, “Allegory of California” at the Pacific Stock Exchange Building in San Francisco and was scheduled to begin another large mural at the California School of Fine Arts – now the San Francisco Art Institute.
The Stern mural portrays three young children reaching into a basket of fruit. Behind them, under blooming almond trees, three men work the soil with hand tools, and in the distance a man drives a tractor. Three of the figures are portraits of Rosalie Stern’s grandchildren. The blonde girl and boy in the foreground are Rhoda and Peter Haas and the kneeling figure is their older brother, Walter. (Rhoda Haas would later be among the first residents of Stern Hall).
A 1982 restoration of the Stern mural by Lucienne Bloch Dimitroff and Stephen Dimitroff, who assisted Rivera on murals in Detroit and New York, "…revealed that Rivera completed the [Stern] work in eight work sessions, each portrait requiring one session, but he was able to cover much more area at one time in the less difficult landscape areas. However, possibly owing to weather conditions or to Rivera’s spending too much attention on his hostess and her friends, the upper left area dried too rapidly and the colors did not adhere permanently." (Hurlburt 1989: 110-111, 274) During restoration, the defective area was stabilized and a clear plexiglas sheet was placed over the niche to protect the mural from dust or vandalism.