In 1932 a young English art historian recently returned from his travels sent an enthusiastic article to The Spectator about a series of brand new murals he had seen in the courtyards of the Ministry of Education in Mexico City:
All these paintings [he wrote] are conscious expositions of Communism. The ultimate object … is always propaganda … to expound the lesson of Communism, just as that of the mediaeval artists was to expound the lesson of Christianity … If mediaeval art was the Bible of the Illiterate, these frescoes are the Kapital of the Illiterate.
The young historian’s name was Anthony Blunt and the Mexican artist who had so impressed him was Diego Rivera. The work that Blunt described has since become a national monument and must be one of the greatest artistic tour de forces of the 20th century.
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