"Hard time"

Some have been curious about the persecution Pablo experienced related to his activities in organizing a Colorado Mexican Farm Workers Union and his involvement in getting signatures for the Stockholm Peace Pledge Petition (a worldwide attempt to keep the United States from going to war with Korea).  In 1947, Richard Nixon began using the court system to ferret out communists, thereby initiating the "Red Scare" in Hollywood, which resulted in the blacklists that ended the careers of many talented individuals in the motion picture industry.

 

 

  In 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC as it was called, began its investigation of communism in the motion picture industry. The Committee, including Chairman J. Parnell Thomas and a young Congressman from California, Richard M. Nixon, gained instant publicity for itself by calling up celebrities to testify and capitalizing on the public's never-ending fascination with Hollywood. 

From: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec97/blacklist_10-24.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ensuing details of Pablo's legal struggle are the subject for several chapters in a book.  Ultimately, the case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court and Pablo's conviction was overturned.  [Jane Rogers, one of his co-defendants, became the lead defendant  in the case and her name appears on the Supreme Court Decision Title page.]

Denver Post, October 13, 1948

 

By 1948, Nixon and his methods had moved to Denver.  Pablo (then known as Paul Kleinbord) and five of his friends were brought before a grand jury and were asked if they were members of the communist party.  They were also pressured to name names of anyone they knew who was a member of, or sympathetic to the communist party in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States.  Pablo refused to name names and was incarcerated in the Denver County Jail and later the Engelwood Correctional Facility for contempt of court.

 

Pablo is still painting.  Besides being in the process of producing several large canvasses, he is still   accepting portrait commissions.  You may contact him through the contact page of this website.

When I was five years old my father brought a record player into our house.  There, I found treasures like the voice of the great Enrico Caruso, Galli Curcci, the sublime coloraturo of the early 1900s, master violinists Misha Elman, Yasha Heifitz playing musical treasures like Jules Massenet's "Theme from Thais".  Suddenly one day Beethoven's monumental "Eroica" came storming out at me from that machine.  It did not frighten me.  The huge sound took hold of me, lifted me somewhere to a higher place than I had ever been before and changed my little life forever.  I had learned to listen and hear the great voices and accomplishments of those who had come before me and who are older and wiser about life and what they literally had to offer.  That is what life is meant to be, I began to think.  That's what we were born for.  This magnificent feast of utter beauty of life fired me with a love of humanity, a humanism,  an unconditional faith in people and their creator and in what human beings were capable of.  This example of the great artists' work set me on a road to a world outlook of love and confidence in all humanity in every part of the world.  And I have never lost this faith through thick and thin, through illness, through horrors of wars and holocausts, through trials and tribulations, and other ugly evils that violate and desecrate the real beauty and truth of the life of humanity.            Written in: 1999

I have recently learned that Linda Bank Downs, the foremost expert on Rivera's "Detroit Industry" mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts (the DIA), is donating to the DIA, her important collection of notes and papers which document the extensive research she performed in preparation for her book, "Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals," published in1999 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York.  Her notes will be archived at the DIA as soon as the museum's current renovation is completed and should serve as an authoritative resource for those seeking more detailed knowledge of Rivera, his masterpiece in Detroit, and the people who were witness to his magnificent work in Detroit.  As part of her research, Ms. Downs conducted thorough interviews with several of Rivera's assistants on the "Detroit Industry" mural project.  Assistants Stephen Dimitroff and Lucienne Bloch verified to Ms. Downs that a young Pablo, then Paul Kleinbordt, indeed assisted Rivera during the mural's creation and assistant Ernst Halberstadt, in addition, remembered watching Pablo paint the "Repair Shop" predella on the South Wall of the mural (pp. 53, 190).  We are so fortunate that Ms. Downs carried out this important research while these vital people, who worked on a daily basis with Rivera, were still available to provide their valuable details and insights.  Ms. Downs also interviewed Pablo for her book and some of his experiences are recorded within its pages. 

Ms. Downs was both the Curator of Education at the Detroit Institute of Arts and an Adjunct Professor of Art at Wayne State University from 1976-1989.  She then became the Head of Education at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, from 1989-2002, and Executive Director of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, from 2002-2006.  At present, Ms. Downs is the Executive Director of the College Art Association in New York.  She is also a PhD candidate in Cultural History at the American University in Washington, DC.

 "Diego Rivera: the Detroit Industry Murals," Ms. Downs'  brilliant, 202-page, hard-bound, exquisitely-illustrated record of Rivera's Detroit murals is available at the Detroit Institute of Arts' museum shop, Amazon.com, and most other conventional book outlets and distributors.

                    artist         community activist      historian       humanitarian        

Pablo has, throughout his life, had a voracious appetite for knowledge that is expressed in his drawing, painting and sculpture and in his social activism.  He is a walking encyclopedia of information on history and the practice of art, and is much sought after as a teacher and lecturer.  As a young man, Pablo worked with Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera (along with Frida Kahlo), and since then, has been privileged to personally know remarkable people like Rachmaninov, Leopold Stokovski, Fritz Reiner, Paul Allard, Charlie Chaplin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Franklin Watkins, Jackson Pollock, Vladimir Kandinsky, Viktor Lowenfeld (a protege of Carl Jung), Jane Fonda, and Donald Sutherland along with people he's painted like Katherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Barbra Streisand, and Pete Seeger. Pablo has produced a massive body of artwork that includes at least 3,000 portraits and several thousand paintings in other genres. He was also an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, the Woman’s Home Companion and several books, one currently in the process of submission with Chilean poet, Mariela Griffor of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.  As an art teacher, he taught at Wayne State University, Michigan State University and the Grosse Pointe Art Association. The common bond that unites every piece of art he has ever produced and every lesson he has ever taught, is a love for humanity and a commitment toward a more compassionate and equitable world.

Pablo's use of line and color have been acclaimed over the years (Newsweek/Post, The Detroit News, The Lansing Journal and others).  He believes the capacity to draw a line is a faculty we are born with, that differentiates us from other living creatures.  He has developed his own 14 point theory of art (especially "line" in art) that underpins much of his own work and has enhanced many art students' work throughout the years.  Pablo's use of color is primarily expressionist and impressionist, deepening what appears on the surface to be realistic or naturalistic images only.  This is particularly true in his portraits, which while influenced by the power and depth of the old masters who capture the very soul and spirit of a person, they also possess abstract elements that are subtly woven into each painting and drawing.

  As a community activist, Pablo has spent 70 or so years working with community and labor organizations in Colorado, Michigan, and elsewhere. Pablo has worked tirelessly in elevating the conditions of humanity; from working to improve Mexican farm laborers’ living and working conditions in Denver and Detroit through the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (which he helped found), to working with Paul Robeson on many anti-racism campaigns including assisting with the preparation a document submitted to the United Nations (with Robeson and William Patterson) claiming U.S. racial genocide against black citizens, to helping organize the campaign to save Bishop Desmond Tutu’s life, to participating with Angela Davis and Charlene Mitchell in the founding of the National Committee of Correspondence in Chicago, and then working with the Michigan chapter of that organization for 25 years, to marching in 1976 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest continuing racism in America, to building unions throughout the Northeast and then working closely with Cadillac Local 22 and U.A.W. Local 600 in Detroit, to working with the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit, 1971, to helping with the Jewish Vocational Services in Detroit, to working with youth groups on art projects for the Detroit Council of the Arts, to helping to establish the Detroit Historical Society (which preserved a civil war era Pony Express station – the only stop for the Express between Detroit and Ohio- saved partially due to funds raised through the sale of prints of Mr. Davis’ drawing of the building).

Moreover, Mr. Davis helped found an organization now entitled Bridging Communities, Incorporated (BCI), which provides food, companionship, transportation, housing assistance, information, neighborhood-building, and educational and social programs to the community of Southwest Detroit.  Pablo was the driving force within that organization to build the Pablo Davis Elder Living Center on W. Vernor Highway in Southwest Detroit, which provides state of the art, affordable housing for senior citizens; a proud accomplishment after 13 years of struggle. And he isn’t done yet, he is still striving for the construction of an Intergenerational Center next to the Elder Living Center to house programs that Mr. Davis helped create, where preschoolers are brought together with the elderly for mutual activities that create social and academic growth in both age groups. The intergenerational programs have been running successfully through BCI for over 15 years now.