Jean Charlot’s fresco for the stairwell of the studio wing of the Des Moines Art Center is an allegory of the visual arts. In the upper right, a heroic, almost sculpturally massive figure of Fame holding a laurel crown (symbol of the arts and of victory) sounds a trumpet. A curtain opens to reveal an artist at work, surrounded by tools and symbols of painting (a palette, brushes and canvas), sculpture (a sculptural bust), and architecture (mason’s square, a column, and an Ionic capital).

French by birth, Charlot moved to Mexico where he became a leader and teacher in the Mexican mural movement. Working at the time of the Mexican Revolution, Charlot was inspired—along with artists such as Diego Rivera—by the techniques, function, and styles of Italian Renaissance fresco painting. Beginning in 1922, he taught Mexican artists how to work in true fresco, a technique in which water-based paints are applied to wet plaster. The painting becomes, in essence, part of the wall. The Mexican revolutionary muralists merged the symbolism and muscularity of Italian Renaissance art with the insistently three-dimensional forms of classical Mayan sculpture to forge a heroic new style. Their powerful works expressed their revolutionary ideals and solidarity with workers, farmers, and the indigenous peoples of Mexico.

During the 1930s, Charlot lived in the United States and received commissions to paint public murals for the Works Progress. In 1949, he became a professor of painting at the University of Hawaii, and throughout his life he continued to accept mural commissions. During the spring of 1956, the Cowles Foundation invited Charlot to come to Des Moines. As a visiting artist at the Des Moines Art Center, he taught a class on mural painting. Working with a group of adult students, Charlot created his 16 x 14’ mural in true fresco between May 29 and June 6, 1956.