Exhibition of Murals by American Painters and Photographers Assembled by the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, February 11-March 26, 1933

This exhibition represented the short-lived 1930s American mural movement. The catalog mentioned three inspirations: by the achievements of Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera, recent controversies and current opportunities for artists to create murals as in the Federal Art Project, and American interest in mural decoration that had very recently increased as a result of the accomplishments of muralists in the 1920s.

Mural painting is inherently different from all other forms of pictorial art in that it is organically connected with architecture. The use of color, design, and thematic treatment can radically alter the sensation of spatial proportions of the building. In this sense, mural is the only form of painting that is truly three-dimensional, since it modifies and partakes of a given space.

Since antiquity, mural paintings have been present and important to art. In the 19th century, mural painting was hardly advanced, but murals reemerged in the 20th century in three major phases. First, abstract and expressionist forms stemmed from experimental easel painting of the Cubist and Fauvist groups in Paris. The second phase developed out of the revolutionary movement in Mexico with the remarkable series of frescoes by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo. With the ensuing acceptance of 20th-century concepts of design and structure in architecture, the new large-scale use of mosaics became a distinctive feature. The third phase was the movement that inspired this 1933 exhibition at the Legion of Honor. A short-lived American mural movement in the 1930s developed under U.S. federal sponsorship through the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. Hundreds of American artists were commissioned by the U.S. government to create public murals across the country, intended to provide work for artists during the Great Depression. This exhibition was meant to provide a platform for artists to get these commissions.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/art/mural-painting