He again tried to pursue art, signing up for schooling in Harbin, but was impoverished and took a position training the cavalry of (and possibly fighting for) the warlord Zhang Zuolin.[2]: Ch.

On Ralph Stackpole's recommendation, he became an assistant to the muralist Diego Rivera (who also spoke Russian as a result of travels in Paris and Russia).

[6]: 5 [1]: 124–125  Arnautoff's mural series was in the historical Roth building, all were medically-themed murals done in the recessed under a loggia with four panels of modern medicine and other panels showing primitive medicine, and additionally he four painted medallions of Joseph Lister, Hippocrates, Louis Pasteur, and Wilhelm Röntgen are on the exterior wall of the loggia.

[7][8] The four murals done in color feature modern medicine and depict Luther Emmett Holt, William Osler, and Harvey Cushing.

[6]: 2 In 1934 he was chosen to paint one of the murals to be done at Coit Tower in San Francisco, with funding from the Public Works of Art Project.

[6]: 17 [9] The mural caused some controversy at the time, because the newsstand he painted (pictured, right) excluded the conservative San Francisco Chronicle and included left-wing newspapers.

[6][page needed] He also painted five post offices (College Station and Linden, Texas; Pacific Grove, Richmond, and South San Francisco, California),[5] and held solo exhibitions throughout the 1930s.

[11] Arnautoff taught sculpture and fresco painting privately and at the California School of Fine Arts, first during summer sessions and as a regular instructor beginning in 1936.

[6]: 4, 50 In 1955, an Arnautoff lithograph titled "DIX McSmear", associating Vice President Richard Nixon with McCarthyism, created controversy.

11 In 2019, a new wave of criticism caused the San Francisco school board to announce plans to paint over the murals, on grounds that these depictions sent a racist message.

[16][17] The San Francisco Board of Education voted in June 2019 to develop a plan to destroy all 13 panels of the mural as a form of "reparations" for past crimes.

[16][18][19] However, after criticism from (among others) the local NAACP[20] and muralist Dewey Crumpler[21] the school board announced it planned to revisit the original decision.

Ruling in favor of historic preservation laws, she wrote: "Neutral administrative procedures must be applied without regard to political interests.