Man at the Crossroads was a fresco mural painted by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera in 1933 for the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York. The composition centered on a worker at the controls of a great machine, flanked by scenes contrasting socialism and capitalism, and included a portrait of Vladimir Lenin that Rivera added after the commission was already underway. Nelson Rockefeller ordered the unfinished mural covered in May 1933 after a newspaper denounced it as anti-capitalist propaganda, and workers chiseled it from the wall and destroyed it in February 1934; Rivera later repainted a version of the composition in Mexico City under the title Man, Controller of the Universe.
Facts
Year Created LocationRCA Building lobby, Rockefeller Center, New York City (destroyed 1934) 1 Partially Attested
Commissioned ByRockefeller Center (Rockefeller family) 1 source documents Rockefeller family involvement in Rockefeller Center construction, no single sentence names the commissioner of this specific mural In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Man at the Crossroads
Lead section, date field
Man at the Crossroads (1933) was a fresco by Mexican painter Diego Rivera.
Lead section, medium field
Man at the Crossroads (1933) was a fresco by Mexican painter Diego Rivera.
Background section, Rockefeller involvement field
John D. Rockefeller Jr., a businessman and member of the Rockefeller family, was heavily involved in the construction of Rockefeller Center in the 1930s.
Lead section, installation site field
Originally slated to be installed in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City
Genre reference
Man at the Crossroads was a fresco mural painted by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera in 1933 for the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York.
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