The seventh annual Willson Center/Georgia Museum of Art Lecture will take place March 3 at 4 p.m. in Room 314 of Sanford Hall. Nina Hellerstein, UGA professor of French and head of the department of Romance languages, will give a lecture entitled “Franco-Mexican Artist Jean Charlot (1898-1979), His French Connections and His Mexican-Inspired Murals on the UGA Campus.”
Born in Paris, and of French, Spanish and Mexican Indian descent, Charlot studied informally at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and eventually moved to Mexico, where he became one of Diego Rivera’s assistants. Rivera and the other members of the Syndicate of Revolutionary Painters, Sculptors and Engravers of Mexico dedicated themselves to producing public art for the lower or popular class of society.
The years from 1941 to 1944, when Charlot was invited by Lamar Dodd to be the artist-in-residence at UGA, are of particular relevance to Hellerstein’s lecture. Charlot instructed art students at the university while working on murals in the area. The murals painted by Charlot on campus can be seen beneath the portico on the front of the Fine Arts Building and in Brooks Hall, next door to where the lecture will take place.