30 Rockefeller Plaza
Skyscraper at the centre of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, built as the RCA Building. In Hayden Herrera’s Frida its lobby is where Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads mural is halted and covered in 1933, the crisis of the couple’s New York stay.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frida | Hayden Herrera | turning point | Rivera is ordered off the scaffold over the Lenin portrait; the mural is covered and later destroyed. |
Frida — Hayden Herrera (1983)
Source: Frida - A Biography of Frida Kahlo · Original · Readwise highlight
Rockefeller’s rental manager, followed by twelve uniformed security guards, stalked into the RCA Building and ordered the artist to stop working.
- Role: turning point
- In the book: In Chapter 11 Rivera paints his mural facing the main entrance while Frida visits the scaffold two or three times a week. After his portrait of Lenin causes an uproar, on May 9, 1933 guards order him down, he is paid off and the mural is covered; protests and picketing follow, and the mural is later chipped off the wall.
- Why it matters: The firing is the central crisis of the New York chapter; it casts Frida as Diego’s loyal defender and drives the couple’s move downtown and their later quarrels.