Anton Refregier

After working various odd jobs in New York City, he earned a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design in 1921.

To earn a living, Refregier worked for interior decorators, creating replicas of François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard paintings.

[1] Refregier returned to New York state during the late 1920s, and lived in the Mount Airy artists' colony in Croton-on-Hudson.

"[2] He said the amazing part of that period was the "human quality, the humanist attitude that [everyone] had" and the discovery that "the artist was not apart from the people.

Refregier competed with a number of other artists for the commission, first funded as a project of the Section of Painting and Sculpture.

Refregier painted the mural with casein tempera on white gesso over plaster walls, in the social realism style.

It included the 1877 anti-Chinese Sand Lot riots, the 1934 San Francisco Waterfront Strike, and the Trial of trade unionist Tom Mooney, that was based on fabricated evidence.

Refregier "believed that art must address itself to contemporary issues and that a mural painting in particular must not be 'banal, decorative embellishment,' but a 'meaningful, significant, powerful plastic statement based on the history and lives of the people.

'"[4] The mural also depicted: the California Gold Rush; the 1860s building by Union Pacific of the western First transcontinental railroad; the disastrous 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire; and further into the twentieth century with the city's Second World War contributions, and culminating in the 1945 signing of the United Nations Charter in the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.

Earthy tones and the lack of bright colors remind viewers of the struggles and hardships he is depicting.

His painting style appears to be very rudimentary and simple, but complex because of the way he uses color to evoke emotion and powerful images to tell a story.

[1] The History of San Francisco created a heated debate because of the controversial events it depicted from California's past.

"[4] Republican Senator Hubert B. Scudder and then US Rep. Richard Nixon were involved in Congressional hearings to have the work removed.