Caruso, MartinaGeorgi, KarenDe Grandis, Greta2024-09-252024-09-252018De Grandis, Greta."Subverting a Pan American Unity: Diego Rivera’s Belief System and Quest for Emancipation". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2018.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/332Thesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Entrepreneurship)--John Cabot University, Fall 2018.In 1940, Diego Rivera was commissioned to paint a large-scale mural as part of the Golden Gate International Exposition in the San Francisco Bay. The masterpiece, originally entitled Unión de la Expresión Artistica del Norte y Sur de este Continente (The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and South of this Continent) and often referred to as Pan American Unity (Fig.1), is composed of five sections in which the artist unfolds his multi-layered belief system, synthetizing Communist utopia and indigenous way of living with Christianity and proletarian art. Yet, this magnificent mural has been neglected in studies of Rivera’s works in the U.S; as such, the literature produced on it is still limited if considering its primary importance for the understanding of Rivera’s artistic and ideological evolution. In order to fully grasp the artist’s visual discourse, a thorough analysis of the overt and covert elements is essential; indeed, the main scope of this thesis is to suggest a different reading of Pan American Unity. Apparently a straightforward ‘innocuous’ mural, depicting and celebrating America continental unity, once its iconography is unveiled, Rivera’s political radicalism becomes clear in his choice of references, albeit concealed under a peaceful and harmonious mask. Unfairly overlooked, this mural reveals the artist’s intricate dialectic of a unified American continent. The present thesis proposes to bring Pan American Unity to the foreground as a necessary work to unfold Rivera’s debated personality and artistic practice, thus opening up new possible fields of research.viii, 80 pagesenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Diego Rivera, 1886-1957Art and societyPaintersThesis