A fully intact 1930s fresco painted by Frederick Olmsted Jr. was found beneath layers of paint on the plain white walls in the hallway of the venerable San Francisco Art Institute. It's one of a dozen murals painted over at the institute. https://t.co/BZnEelgkzM pic.twitter.com/5pQmX5bfRT
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San Francisco Art Institute Facilities Manager Heather Hickman Holland noticed some unusual bumps in a wall at the school. She first thought they were cobwebs, but later realized they were outlines of faces! A little digging revealed that there are a half-dozen or so murals underneath the painted walls at the school, frescoes painted in the 1930s as a project of the Works Progress Administration.
The school received a city art grant to uncover small squares of paint on the walls, revealing hints of what may lie underneath. The school eventually received grants from the Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation and the national Save America’s Treasures to finally remove the paint on the wall where Olmsted’s mural was believed to rest.
As architectural conservator Molly Lambert and her team began peeling away the paint, the faces of 1930s workers began to emerge from their long slumber. The nine figures were back at work cutting and moving slabs of marble, smoking cigarettes and polishing the newly cut pieces.
“Of course when you uncover something like this you’re not sure what the quality’s going to be,” Lambert said. “But this is fantastic.”
Once the bulk of the paint was removed, the work came down to a lot of delicate scraping to remove the final layers. Lambert estimated the fresco was covered over in some dozen layers of paint.
The first fresco revealed was a work by Frederick Olmsted. Read about the discovery at NBC Bay Area. -via Metafilter