23 Facts About Victor Arnautoff

Victor Arnautoff worked in San Francisco and the Bay Area from 1925 to 1963, including two decades as a teacher at Stanford University, and was particularly prolific as a muralist during the 1930s.

Victor Arnautoff became a naturalized US citizen, but returned to the Soviet Union after the death of his wife, continuing his career there before his death.

Victor Arnautoff showed a talent for art from an early age and hoped to study art after graduating from the gymnasium in Mariupol.

Victor Arnautoff went on to hold military leadership positions in the army of Nicholas II and the White Siberian Army, and was repeatedly awarded medals for his service.

Victor Arnautoff again tried to pursue art, signing up for schooling in Harbin, but was impoverished and took a position training the cavalry of the warlord Zhang Zuolin.

In November 1925 Arnautoff went to San Francisco on a student visa to study at the California School of Fine Arts.

Victor Arnautoff was given a scholarship as the best student in his year, and became active in the city's leftist arts scene.

Rivera and Victor Arnautoff worked on a series of murals at the National Palace and at the Palace of Cortes, Cuernavaca.

Victor Arnautoff's first significant work after returning was a mural on the wall of his studio, which he opened to the public.

Victor Arnautoff was appointed technical director of the Coit Tower murals project.

Victor Arnautoff is prominently represented there by a mural depicting San Francisco city life.

Victor Arnautoff was, along with fellow activist Bernard Zakheim, perhaps the most prolific muralist in San Francisco in the 1930s.

Victor Arnautoff completed not only the murals at the Palo Alto Clinic and Coit Tower, but at the Presidio chapel, George Washington High School, and the California School of Fine Arts library.

Victor Arnautoff painted five post offices, and held solo exhibitions throughout the 1930s.

Victor Arnautoff taught sculpture and fresco painting privately and at the California School of Fine Arts, first during summer sessions and as a regular instructor beginning in 1936.

Victor Arnautoff taught art at Stanford University from 1938 to 1962.

Victor Arnautoff's style was generally more subtle than Rivera's and other social realists, but his politics were nevertheless reflected in his work, which has been described as being part of a mural arts movement that "hoped to inspire change through criticism of the present political system".

In 1955, an Victor Arnautoff lithograph titled "DIX McSmear", associating Vice President Richard Nixon with McCarthyism, created controversy.

However, the faculty committee that reviewed his case declined to make such a recommendation to the president, and Victor Arnautoff remained a faculty member.

Victor Arnautoff returned to the Soviet Union in 1963, settling in Mariupol, Ukraine, where he had attended gymnasium.

Victor Arnautoff did woodcuts for books, and had several solo exhibitions.

Victor Arnautoff remarried in 1970 and died in Leningrad on March 22,1979.

Similarly, Victor Arnautoff placed the body of a dead Native American at the feet of pioneers, "challenging the prevailing narrative that westward expansion had been into largely vacant territory waiting for white pioneers to develop its full potential".