SAN FRANCISCO — For decades the monumental 10-panel fresco by Diego Rivera depicting a continent linked by creativity has been mounted in the lobby of a theater at City College of San Francisco.
In 1961 it was moved to the campus theater building, now called Diego Rivera Theater , where it was wedged into too small a space.
Each month, about 100 art students and Rivera tourists might have seen it at the college, Maynez estimated.
Maynez, 74, is self-taught.
And the mother hovering over a dead child? That’s Rivera paying homage to “Guernica,” painted by his friend Picasso.
Nearly every weekday since he retired nine years ago, Maynez walks or takes public transit to City College to care for the fresco.
“Whenever someone has a question, they’ll say, ‘Oh, Will will know that,’” said Michelle Barger, head of conservation at SFMOMA.
In 2011, wanting more people to see the mural and hoping he could find a better campus location, Maynez, with approval from administrators, used funds from a Rivera account at the college’s foundation to pay for a study on the feasibility of moving the mural.
Rivera, who intended for the fresco to be moved to City College, did not paint directly onto a wall, but on plaster with steel frames.
Two summers ago, as engineers were investigating the mural, they drilled 18-inch-wide Swiss-cheese-like holes in the college theater’s exterior walls.
Three university artists painted nearly exact replicas of two panels, using the same type of lime and paintbrushes as Rivera.
Threaded rods were slowly twisted into place above and below the mural by teams of movers situated inside and outside the building, who wore headsets to synchronize their actions as they simultaneously turned the rods — one-sixteenth of an inch at a time.