Into the lobby of Rockefeller Center's towering RCA Building last week stalked Rental Manager Hugh Robertson, followed by twelve uniformed guards. The procession halted before a huge (63 ft. by 17 ft.) unfinished fresco on the wall facing the doors. Its bright colors and hard, compact figures filled the lobby like a parade. On scaffolding before it stood a big, drooping man with a gloomy face and sad Mexican eyes: Diego Rivera, the world's foremost living fresco painter. A guard called to Rivera to come down from his scaffold. He laid down his big brushes and the tin kitchen plate he uses for a palette, climbed nimbly down the ladder. Mr. Robertson handed him an envelop. It held a check for $14,000, last payment on the $21,000 due Rivera for his work. It held too a letter telling him he was fired. Artist Rivera woodenly went to his work shack on the lobby balcony to change from his overalls. At once more guards appeared, pushed away the movable scaffold. Others came with planking. Within half an hour, the unfinished fresco was covered with tarpaper and a wooden screen. Meanwhile one of Rivera's assistants rushed hysterically out to the restaurant where six other assistants were dining, to spread the news and detonate 1933's biggest art story.
The seven assistants rushed back, gibbering with indignation. Assistant Lucienne Bloch, daughter of Swiss Composer Ernest Bloch, scraped the white paint off two second-story windows to form the words: "Workers Unite," "Help! Protect Rivera M. . . ." Guards stopped her from finishing the word "Murals." By nightfall Communists began to swarm in Rockefeller Plaza, the new thoroughfare cutting through Rockefeller Center. They churned about, cheering for the man whom they had read out of their party four years ago, waving banners "Save Rivera's Painting," marching & countermarching around the RCA Building. Mounted police pranced on the outskirts, shooed them away before audiences issuing from the two Rockefeller Center cinema houses could jam the district.
Next day newspapers splashed across their front pages the ostensible reason for all the hubbub. On May 1 (May Day), near the centre of the Fresco had appeared a small head of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s son Nelson had asked Rivera ''to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin's face now appears." Rivera had countered by offering to balance Lenin with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The Rockefellers exploded, fired Rivera.