The mural that Mexico's Diego Rivera painted down the sides and across the bottom of the distribution chamber of Mexico City's Lerma River water system (TIME, June 4, 1951) was a wonder to behold the day it was dedicated almost five years ago. Painted around the water's edge were giant-sized symbols of Mexico's people, their past oppressors and future hopes; beneath the water was an intricate pattern of teeming protoplasmic life. Rivera confidently predicted that his water-washed mural, Water, Origin of Life, painted with a mixture of plastic polystyrene in the fresco pigment, then varnished with transparent rubber, was good for...
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