MORELIA, Mexico — After nearly a century, Philip Guston’s monumental mural, The Struggle Against Terrorism, has been meticulously restored and will be unveiled to the public on January 31, 2025, at the Regional Museum of Michoacán. Philip Guston created the mural in collaboration with artist Reuben Kadish; the artwork is a striking visual condemnation of fascism, intolerance, and violence, painted in vivid colours across a 40-foot-high wall.
The fresco’s restoration results from a year-long international effort involving conservators, architects, and cultural organisations, including the Guston Foundation, Mexico’s Ministry of Culture, and the National Center for the Conservation of Artistic and Architectural Heritage. This ambitious project has rescued the mural from decades of decay and highlights its enduring relevance in a world still confronting the very issues it portrays.
“When I first saw the mural in 2006, its original impact was almost impossible to imagine,” said Musa Mayer, Guston’s daughter. “I’m deeply thankful to everyone who worked hard to bring this extraordinary piece back to life. Its message feels just as urgent today as it did 90 years ago.”
Painted in 1934–35, The Struggle Against Terrorism is one of Guston’s earliest major works, completed when he was just 21 and still known as Philip Goldstein. Alongside Kadish, Guston travelled over 1,700 miles from Los Angeles to Morelia, the capital of Michoacán, at the invitation of their mentor, the renowned Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Both artists, the sons of Jewish immigrants, were deeply troubled by the rise of fascism in Europe and the racism they witnessed in the United States. Their mural, spanning 1,024 square feet, became a raw and impassioned response to these global crises.
Painted in the demanding medium of pure fresco, the mural presents a haunting panorama of human suffering and oppression. It brings together scenes of torture, persecution, and intolerance, drawing from biblical stories, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Ku Klux Klan, alongside symbols of Nazi and Communist regimes. The composition is grand and deeply personal, with larger-than-life figures rendered in a dynamic, almost cinematic style reflecting Siqueiros’s influence.
Despite its strong presence, the mural was concealed behind a false wall in the 1940s and remained hidden for decades. Rediscovered in 1973, it had suffered significant damage from years of exposure to humidity and unstable environmental conditions.
By the early 2000s, the mural’s deterioration had reached a critical point. Sally Radic, executive director of the Guston Foundation, took the lead in preserving it, bringing in Argentinian architect Luis Laplace and working closely with Mexican cultural officials, including Marina Nuñez Bespalova, Undersecretary of Cultural Development.
“We knew we had to act quickly,” Radic said. “This was a race against time to save something irreplaceable.”
The restoration process, overseen by Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, involved meticulous conservation work and structural repairs to the 18th-century Baroque palace that houses the mural. A contract signed in May 2024 paved the way for construction to address the humidity issues that had accelerated the mural’s decline.
The Struggle Against Terrorism is far more than a relic of the past; it is a work of art that speaks directly to the present. Guston and Kadish drew inspiration from various sources, including Surrealism, Futurism, and the frescoes of the Italian Renaissance, to create a mural that is as visually striking as it is politically charged. The artists used Siqueiros’s technique of polyangularity, employing multiple vanishing points to infuse the mural with a sense of motion and drama.
The mural’s themes—resistance to tyranny, the destructive power of hatred, and the human spirit’s enduring strength—are extremely contemporary. “This isn’t just about restoring a mural,” said Nuñez Bespalova. “It’s about reclaiming memory, history, and the voices that urge us to stand against oppression.”
The mural opens to the public on Friday, 31st January. For Guston, who would later become one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, this early work remains a defining expression of his lifelong commitment to addressing his era’s moral and political challenges.