Lost Mural by Secret Communist Unearthed at SF State

KQED (SAN FRANCISCO) -- Arnautoff painted his mural in 1941, just months before the U.S. entered World War II, and Richmond transformed into an epicenter for wartime ship building. Historian Robert Cherny, an emeritus professor at San Francisco State University, says Arnautoff followed a process he used for other post office murals in the New Deal era: He started by talking to locals. “Arnautoff talked to the local postmaster, the local newspaper editor,” Cherny says. “He walked around the streets.”