Explore the Reception of this artwork, Pan American Unity.
During the completion of the mural in November 1940, the editorial board of the Madera Times opined "There will be many who view the work who will wonder why, after it is placed in storage, it is not permitted to remain there. There would be no great loss to the art world if this could happen."Patrick Marnham wrote "The colours and many of the details are superb ... Yet there is something unconvincing about the political ideas expressed" in his 1998 biography of Rivera. ... it would have made a wonderful storyboard for a Hollywood feature cartoon — but it does not move us." By 2021, Neal Benezra declared it "Rivera's painterly plea for a kind of unity of the Americas ... an anti-nationalist way of looking at things."
unity of the Americas Neal Benezra