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Although the Palo Alto Museum isn’t expected to open to the public until the fall, it’s already possible to catch a glimpse of history there, thanks to the series of 17 beautiful and interesting Depression-era murals on the front of the building. Collectively named “Modern and Ancient Medicine,” they were painted by Russian-American artist Victor Arnautoff in 1932 for the Palo Alto Medical Clinic.
According to the Palo Alto Museum, not only are the murals the only buon (true) frescoes in Santa Clara County, they also speak to the medical innovations at the time, and showcase Arnautoff’s influence by Diego Rivera, whom he learned from and collaborated with in Mexico.
This was Arnautoff’s first solo commission in California and he depicted medical pioneers, as well as contrasted modern and ancient medical methods. The mural series features four multicolored frescoes representing modern medicine in action, along with nine gray-colored frescoes appearing like reliefs (called grisaille) depicting medical practices of the past, and four sepia-colored medallion portraits of prominent scientists.
The Roth building
The Roth Building, as the former Palo Alto Medical Clinic is now known, was constructed as a medical clinic for Dr. Russell Lee and five other doctors, who opened one of the nation’s first group practices. The building, at 300 Homer Ave., is named after Dr. Fritz Roth, one of the clinic’s founding doctors.
The architect Birge Clark, whose work is well-represented throughout Palo Alto, designed the Spanish Colonial Revival style building. He was the brother of Esther Clark, who was the only founding female doctor at the clinic.
The clinic later became the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and now houses the Palo Alto Museum after a lengthy renovation that began in 2023.
The building is U-shaped with a clay tile roof and a second floor with a wooden balcony. Below the balcony is an arched arcade with a covered exterior gallery and a courtyard entrance that houses the 17 murals, with 13 inside the covered gallery and four on the front at the entrance. The almost 100-year-old murals were painted by Arnautoff in true fresco style, where pigments are applied onto freshly laid wet plaster which makes the color a permanent part of the wall as it dries.
The multicolored frescoes
Arnautoff was a patient of Dr. Lee and “might have suffered from an ulcer… (because) he was a smoker,” said Nadya Chuprina, Palo Alto public art program coordinator. Dr. Lee persuaded the artist to carry out the commission, which Arnautoff did with the oversight of Dr. Lee, in terms of the medical methods and pioneers included.
“The mural was intended not only as a tribute to the evolution of medicine, but also as a reflection of the clinic’s innovative philosophy and commitment to advancing patient care,” as Chuprina describes in her public tour notes.
The artist himself appears in one of the multicolored murals, which shows Arnautoff being X-rayed by a doctor who resembles Dr. Lee.
This mural showcases the advancement in medical technology at the time, in this case the fluoroscope, an early form of X-ray. The other multicolored panels, starting from the left side, feature pediatrics, internal medicine and surgery, respectively. They also depict realistic scenes from clinical settings and famous doctors in the fields at the time.
Chuprina explained that “Arnautoff would go to the clinic and sketch out clinicians’ rooms … he wanted to be as realistic, as precise, as possible.” In the pediatrics-themed panel on the left, a doctor and nurse are standing in the back. The doctor is depicted as Emmett Holt, a distinguished American pediatrician and pioneer in children’s diseases, holding a naked baby. He is handing the baby to the mother, who is sitting on a chair ready to receive her child. In all of the multicolored frescoes, he is the only character who is looking directly at the viewer.
This is not the case in the panel showing internal medicine. Here a doctor, Sir William Osler, a Canadian internist who was a highly regarded teacher and writer, is depicted examining a woman naked from the waist up facing toward the viewer.
This image was controversial to the degree that it was written about in the papers and one of the founding doctors, Dr. Roth, wanted the mural painted over. However, this did not happen and Chuprina observed that it captures a realistic, intimate moment between a doctor and patient. The doctor is standing behind the patient, looking down while examining her, and thus is portrayed as being respectful of the patient.
The grisaille frescoes
Between 1929 and 1931, Arnautoff worked as an assistant to Rivera in Mexico and learned the fresco technique from him. Among other projects, they collaborated on fresco paintings at the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca. For their fresco series at the palace, they used a composition with colored frescoes at the top and grisaille frescoes at the bottom. Thus, Arnautoff most likely was inspired to use a similar composition for his “Modern and Ancient Medicine” series at the Roth Building, according to Chuprina.
Four of the nine grisaille frescoes contrast ancient medical practices with the modern medical methods in the colorful frescoes. For example, the grisaille fresco contrasting the surgery panel depicts a man having a wound cauterized with a hot poker. Similarly, below the modern technology fresco a grisaille fresco depicts a man who is using ancient technology, such as a compass while looking to the stars.
The remaining five grisaille frescoes are located below the four windows and above the entrance door. Beneath the windows, on the two wing walls of the exterior gallery, are contrasting images showing the modern microscope and Bunsen burner on the left and the older remedies of herbs and roots on the right. Underneath each window on the entrance wall are two frescoes depicting a woman and a man, who may be modeled after Arnautoff and his wife, Lydia. They are holding various tools representing war and peace, such as a scythe (death) and a scale (justice). Above the entrance door is a narrow fresco depicting a skull and snake surrounded by books representing knowledge.
Chuprina said that the people represented in the grisaille frescoes, in addition to Arnautoff and his wife, are reminiscent of pre-Columbian people. Arnautoff was influenced by Rivera and inspired by the images he had produced in collaboration with him in Mexico. She further noted that grisaille frescoes, apart from being very rare, resemble reliefs in granite or marble and are hard to produce.
The medallions
Four sepia-colored medallion portraits on the arches leading to the exterior gallery depict from left to right, Joseph Lister, Hippocrates, Louis Pasteur and Wilhelm Röntgen. Hippocrates was a Greek physician and philosopher of the classical period who is considered one of the most important figures in the history of medicine.
The three other portraits depict prominent 19th-century European scientists. Lister was an English surgeon, medical scientist, and pioneer of antiseptic surgery. Pasteur was a French chemist, pharmacist and microbiologist renowned for his discovery of pasteurization. Röntgen was a German experimental physicist who produced and detected electromagnetic radiation known as X-rays.
Chuprina noted that, “it tells us everything about the artist and his level of skill and thoughtfulness … he was able to utilize the space to tell this really complex story of the history of medicine… Everything is very intentional and succeeds to tell this very compelling story: ‘This is a modern clinic with progressive practices – we no longer expel demons.’”
Conserving the murals
In 2016, the historic frescoes officially became part of the Palo Alto Public Art Commission’s collection, which allowed program staff to provide maintenance and conservation of the murals. A detailed condition assessment and subsequent restoration were carried out by fine art conservators and experts on Rivera and Arnautoff frescoes.
Partially funded by a grant from Santa Clara County’s Historical Heritage Grant Program, the project began in 2023, and in 2026 the four multicolored frescoes were fully restored. Restoration has begun on the remaining frescoes, which will be completed when the commission secures additional funding
A prominent New Deal muralist
Arnautoff led a fascinating life. He was born in 1896 in Mariupol in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine, and served as a cavalry officer in the White Army during World War I, until he was forced to flee to Manchuria, China, in 1920 after the Bolshevik Revolution. He lived for five years in China, where he met his wife Lydia Blonsky and had two sons. In 1925, Arnautoff immigrated to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts and his family followed. They moved to Mexico in 1929, where he worked with Rivera and had a third son.
Click for more Depression-era murals to see on the Midpeninsula
Victor Arnautoff’s recently restored “Modern and Ancient Medicine” frescoes at Palo Alto’s historic Roth Building may be among the Peninsula’s best-known examples of Depression-era public art, but they’re not the only surviving works from the New Deal era, which roughly spanned from the early 1930s into the early 1940s.
These murals were funded through federal New Deal programs during the Great Depression to put artists to work and predominantly celebrate workers, history and American life. Many were installed in post offices, libraries, public schools and hospitals.
Just north of Palo Alto’s frescoes, you can find another lesser-known example of New Deal-era art at the Allied Arts Guild, 75 Arbor Road, in Menlo Park. Artist Maxine Albro, one of the few women commissioned to paint public murals under the federal art program, painted “The Patron Saint of Craftsmen.” The mural, which was restored in 1990, is still visible along Arbor Road. Albro was also professionally linked to Arnautoff. While painting murals inside San Francisco’s Coit Tower, the two artists reportedly exchanged wall assignments at Arnautoff’s request.
In Redwood City, the historic Redwood City Post Office, 855 Jefferson Ave., features “Flower Farming and Vegetable Raising” in its lobby. The 1937 mural by José Moya del Pino was commissioned through the federal Treasury Section of Fine Arts and celebrates the city’s once-thriving flower industry. At the time, Redwood City was known as the chrysanthemum capital of the world.
—Linda Taaffe
The family moved back to California in 1931 and Arnautoff became one of the most prominent muralists during the New Deal era. In addition to his commission in Palo Alto, he was among the team of artists who worked on murals at Coit Tower in 1934, where he also served as technical director. He painted the controversial “Life of Washington” murals at George Washington High School in San Francisco in 1936 as a Works Progress Administration commission.
Arnautoff taught at Stanford University from 1938 to 1962 and influenced a generation of artists, including Richard Diebenkorn. As a Communist, he was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, though he retained his academic position. After his wife’s death in 1961, he retired and returned to the Soviet Union in 1963. He continued to make art and remarried in 1970. Arnautoff died in Leningrad in 1979 at the age of 82.
Chuprina described Arnautoff’s frescoes in Palo Alto as “a hidden gem… It’s an outdoor mural and it’s accessible to our community 24/7. We don’t have to wait for the museum to open. We don’t have to buy tickets.”
The Arnautoff “Modern and Ancient Medicine” frescoes are located at the Palo Alto Museum, 300 Homer Ave., Palo Alto. The museum is expected to open in the fall. For more information about the murals, visit
tinyurl.com/PaloAltoArnautoffFrescoes or paloaltomuseum.org/moments-in-history-victor-arnautoff-1896-1979.
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