Victor Arnautoff reigned as San Francisco's leading mural painter during the New Deal era. Yet that was only part of an astonishing life journey from Tsarist officer to leftist painter. Robert W. Cherny's masterful biography of Arnautoff braids the artist's work with his increasingly leftist politics and the tenor of his times. Delving into sources on Russian émigrés and San Francisco's arts communities, Cherny traces Arnautoff's life from refugee art student and assistant to Diego Rivera to prominence in the New Deal's art projects and a faculty position at Stanford University. As Arnautoff's politics moved left, he often incorporated working people and people of color into his treatment of the American past and present. In the 1950s, however, his participation in leftist organizations and a highly critical cartoon of Richard Nixon landed him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to calls for his dismissal from Stanford. Arnautoff eventually departed America, a refugee of another kind, now fleeing personal loss and the disintegration of the left-labor culture that had nurtured him, before resuming his artistic career in the Soviet Union that he had fought in his youth to destroy.| Title Contents List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Abbreviations 1. Childhood in a Troubled Land, 1896–1914 2. "The Ineptitude of Command," 1914–1921 3. Wandering Russians, 1921–1925 4. "The Best Pupil in the Class," 1925–1929 5. "Under Rivera's Guidance," 1929–1931 6. "Perhaps the Most Gifted of the Local Muralists," 1931–1935 7. King of Parilia, 1935–1941 8. Art, Politics, and War, 1941–1945 9. DETCOM and COMSAB, 1945–1953 10. "An Unwanted Guest in America," 1953–1963 11. "I Am Home," 1963–1979 Color Illustrations Appendix: Arnautoff's Public Murals Notes Selected Sources Index | "We have Cherny to thank for the detective work that produced this fine biography of an artist whose work and life tell us much about twentieth century history." —Pacific Historical Review
"Robert W. Cherny has written a fascinating and meticulously researched political biography exploring the life and work of the public muralist Victor Arnautoff." —The Journal of American History
"A useful tool for scholars who want to pursue further work on Arnautoff's legacy and Russian art in the United States."—H-Net
|Robert W. Cherny is professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University. His publications include five books on American politics.