After the talk I asked one of the docents about this painting. She told me it was the work of Maxo Vanko, some of whose drawings and paintings were on exhibit at the Rivers of Steel Gallery in the Bost Building, "Gledaj! The Gaze of Maxo Vanka" "Gledaj! The Gaze of Maxo Vanka". She told me that I could see the painting itself, which is one of the murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, and that the church gave talks on the murals on Saturdays. So I hied myself to Millvale the next morning, a Saturday, to visit St. Nicholas and learn more about the Vanka murals.
Looking around the sanctuary, I was stunned by the anti-war, anti-capitalist imagery of the Vanka murals. I can think of no other church, Catholic or otherwise, that displays such anti-establishment imagery--for example: Mary attempting to stop carnage on the battlefield; a ghoulish "capitalist" sitting at a table laden with food, while a crippled worker lies on the floor in front; mothers weeping over a son fallen on the battlefield; Jesus's side being pierced by a soldier's bayonet on a battlefield.
"Mary on the Battlefield" 1941
"The Capitalist" 1941
"Croatian Mother Raises her Son for War" 1937
"Christ on the Battlefield" 1941
Maxo Vanka's biography is as interesting as his art. He was born in Croatia in 1889, an out-of-wedlock son of an Austrian nobleman. Like Hemingway, Vanka, a pacifist, served with a Red Cross unit in Belgium during WWI. By 1920, Vanka was working in Croatia as an art professor and artist who was involved in efforts to shape a new national identity based on folkloric and ethnic traditions. In 1931 he married Margaret Stettin, the daughter of a Jewish surgeon from New York City. By 1934 the threat from the Nazis was clear, and the Vankas emigrated to New York.
In 1937 Vanka was commissioned by Father Albert Zagar, another Croatian immigrant, to paint murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church that would have meaning for the immigrant workers who were his parishioners. In 1941 Zagar brought back Vanka to do another set of murals. (Read the whole story here: "A Gift to America: Maxo Vanka and the Millvale Murals" ("A Gift to America: Maxo Vanka and the Millvale Murals").
When I visited the church, scaffolding obstructed the view of the figure in a gas mask, but I learned that it is titled "Injustice" (shown above), a companion piece to "Justice" on the opposite end of the wall. Vanka's murals are powerful, arresting images, so unlike the conventional representations of saints and Biblical figures shown in most church artwork.
Remarkably, one mural includes a Methodist man (at left of the Christ figure), a patron of the church who employed many of the congregation.
Murals depicting workers and work in industrial Pittsburgh proliferated during the Depression, so in that sense, the St. Nicholas murals are not unique. Supported by Federal grants, these murals were inspired by the radical labor culture of the city, for example, those in the atrium of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland. But Vanka's murals are unique in that they are in a church, not in a public space like a museum or courthouse. Father Zagar should receive credit for being, as Vanka put it, the “only priest in 100,000 who [was] courageous enough to break with tradition, to have his church decorated with pictures of modern, social significance.”
Vanka's murals are not pretty, nor are they intended to be. They are striking, powerful images of the violence that the forces of greed wreak on common people.
On Labor Day, I salute Maxo Vanka for his skill and Father Zagar for his vision in creating these extraordinary murals that capture so powerfully the immigrant worker experience.
"There is no wealth but life." --John Ruskin, Unto This Last 1860
[You can see all of Vanka's murals on the website "Save Maxo Vanka" at vankamurals.org.]
