PBA Galleries

• Exhibition catalogue, March 16-23, 1942 (American Contemporary Art Gallery, NY, 1942) Original pictorial wrappers. 9 x 12 inches, 18pp. Text by Herman Baron et al. 32 illustrations of Refregier drawings, including his later-controversial mural designs for the San Francisco Rincon Annex Post Office, the WPA Building at the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 and the legendary Café Society Uptown Black Jazz Club in New York
• Anton Refregier, “San Francisco Album …History on a Sketch Pad” Pp. 154-159 in Fortune magazine, September 1945 (special war’s end issue with insert “Beyond the Atomic Bomb” by Vannevar Bush) Complete issue, near fine in worn original mailing box. 10.5 x 13 inches.
•  “Pioneer Pathways”. 5 large swatches of Riverdale fabric beige cloth designed by Refregier (c.Associated Artists, 1952) Approximately 22 x 22 inches.
• Anton Refregier / Peace, War and the Freedom Struggle / Exhibition catalogue (A.C.A. Gallery, New York, 1968; reprinted from a union magazine) 8.5 x 10.5 inches, 7pp.

Russian-born artist Refregier first came to prominence painting murals for the WPA during the Depression, including the examples shown at the 1942 exhibition, when he was already at work on his famous “History of San Francisco” 27-panel mural in the Rincon Annex Post Office – its frank portrayals of racial and economic oppression later denounced as “subversive” during the Cold War. Unbowed by the controversy, Refregier remained dedicated to his political principles; the 1968 Exhibition was held just as he was refusing to pay his taxes in protest against the Vietnam War.
The Fortune magazine article has 5 color and 12 black and white Refregier sketches of the historic first United Nations Conference, which was also one of the themes in his famous Rincon Annex “History of San Francisco” mural. Refregier’s “Pioneer Pathways” cloth design features 16 multi-color historical images of early Americans at work, from women knitting and churning butter, to fishermen, woodsmen, horsemen and blacksmiths, reminiscent of his famous Rincon Post Office mural - rare example of the artist’s work just as his mural was being denounced by Richard Nixon and other McCarthy era militants as "artistically offensive, historically inaccurate” and "subversive". The 1968 catalogue is illustrated with a photo of the artist and reproductions of 8 Refregier black-and-white drawings; several powerful images related to Southern segregation and the Civil Rights movement.