Ione Robinson


Ione Robinson was an American artist, writer and socialite. She is most known for her reporting of the Mexican muralist movement, especially episodes on Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, in her book A wall to paint on. In this book, she reported also her experiences from the Spanish Civil War, that she witnessed in Barcelona in 1938.

Life and Work

Education

Robinson was educated at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, from 1925 to 1926. In 1927 she participated in a Pennsylvania Academy Summer School programme. During a first visit in New York in August 1927, she decided to stay there an took a job as a private teacher in Woodstock, NY. She started to work for Frankl Galleries, a seller of design furniture, shortly after this. Later, she assisted to Rockwell Kent in producing woodcuts. She caracterized Kent's work in this time with the following words: «I don't like Rockwell's cold, hard lines and forms in his paintings; nevertheless, this same technique in his black and white drawings has power. She was introduced to Elena Krylenko and Max Eastman, friends of Leon Trotsky. From this moment to the time she settled permanently in France in the 1940s, she succeeded in widening her sphere in affluent circles of New York and New England.

The muralist scene 1929–32

In 1928, Robinson visited Paris for the first time, then Florence and Naples in 1929. Back in Croton at the Eastmans, she met George Biddle, who offered to introduce her to Diego Rivera for a work placement. In 1929 too, she had a first opportunity to exhibit drawings in the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. Soon after this, she travelled to Mexico City, where she was welcomed by the son and daughter of José Vasconcelos Calerón, a former mexican education minister, who had initiated, among others, the muralist movement in 1921 by releasing statal commissions especially in school buildings. With her letter of recommendation by Biddle, Robinson finally met Rivera, who invited her to participate working in his Epopeya mural. The work included scaling sketches and tracing them to the wall, then tracing the drawings onto sections of paper for later transfer onto the fresh plaster. She also participated in restoring damaged riverian frescoes in the SEP. The work was done by Robinson and Ramón Alva Guadarrama, with additional helpers. The same year Robinson posed to Rivera for the allegory of Continence for his Health ministry frescoes. During her stay she was housed by the photographer Tina Modotti. Her acquaintances in a very short time came to include many members of the muralist and literati scene, but also Sergei Eisenstein and finally the journalist Joe Freeman, the TASS respreentative in Mexico at the time, whom she married in the end of 1929. They divorced in 1931 due to serious differencies of the mindsets of the two, Freeman being a communist with Jewish orthodox background, Robinson, on the other hand, a communist of liberal middle-class provenance.
Back in New York in 1930, Robinson came in contact with José Clemente Orozco, who may have connected her with Alma Reed, the owner of Delphic Studios, where she had the opportunity to show some of her Mexican drawings. Orozco also drove Robinson's attention to Spain, at the time when the monarchy was about to fall.
A John Simon Guggenheim fellowship enable Robinson to spend another ten months in Mexico, from spring 1931 to early 1932. For a short time, she assisted Victor Arnautoff in executing parts of Riveras's National palace mural, while Rivera himself worked in California. This caused great ill-feelings, for Rivera seemed to blame Robinson for his expulsion from the Mexican Communist Party in 1929, in which Joe Freeman was apparently involved. Frida Kahlo, Rivera's wife since 1929, got notice of her working on the National palace project, and Robinson had to leave it. During her sojourn, she met Jean Charlot, one of the early pioneers of muralism in Mexico, who later reported his experiences in his book The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920–1925. Another acquaintance was the artist from Utah, Paul Higgins, who played an important role in mediating between US-American newcomers and the muralists in Mexico, especially Rivera, in the 1930s. In «the village Tlalpam», Robinson taught in an Open Air School, together with the Japanese painter :de:Kitagawa_Tamiji|Kitagawa. Robinson deepened her knowledge mainly of mexican colonial art travelling to various places and studying the collection of the Academia de San Carlos.

WPA, New York, Barcelona 1931–38

Another unhappy marriage with John Dallet, a descendant from a rich southern plantation owner family, in 1933, allowed Robinson to lead a relatively carefree life for the following years. In that same year, she lost her mother and a brother in a car accident. Her daughter Anne Dallet, born in 1935, whom she had to leave in the custody of the Dallet family after her separation from her husband, triggered her writing down her experiences of 1927 to 1939, published in 1946.
In 1936 Robinson was included in a non-relief project of the WPA in the Bellevue Hospital in New York, as an assistant of several younger painters including Emilio Luis Amero Mimiaga, Antonio Pujol Jiménez and Luis Arenal Bastar. From this, an own mural project resulted: the representation of peasants sowing and harvesting. A second project was offered to her in the prison at Welfare Island, which she refused. The project in the hospital was finally dismissed. In 1938, she tried to arrange a mural project for :es:Luis_Quintanilla_Isasi|Luis Quintanilla at Columbia University.
Again in France, Robinson decided to visit Barcelona and witness the situation of the Spanish Republic. Passing through London, she had the opportunity to talk to Winston Churchill who recommended her instead of being bombed in Barcelona to wait in London and be bombed there. She should «take the first boat home and urge the people of my country not to be spectators of events that were happening in Europe». Nevertheless Robinson traveled to Barcelona where she could visit «refugios» and keep records of their inhabitants. By intermediation of :es:Luis_Quintanilla_Isasi|Luis Quintanilla she met members of the government and commanders of the Republican Army, including general :es:Bibiano_Fernández_Osorio_y_Tafall|Bibiano Fernández Osorio y Tafall who became a close friend of Robinson and led her to the Ebro front where normally no «tourists» were allowed. In Spain she met David Alfaro Siqueiros who, like Antonio Pujol, as a stalwart communist had joined the Republican Army and had been appointed a colonel, considering his experience as a soldier in the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. Siqueiros, whom she first met in Mexico in 1929, had been a regular passerby of hers in New York in 1936.
Before returning to the American continent Robinson accepted an invitation of Alfred and Dorothy Oeschner, American journalists living in Berlin. She left a rare description of the :de:Julius-Leber-Kaserne_|Goering barracks in Wedding, and of a talk to the director of the structure about the ways in which German promoted murals in comparison to the WPA. Robinson displayed her Spanish works several times in the United States and in Mexico, with the primary aim to gain backing for the Republic.

France

From the 1940s, Robinson spent much time in France and worked as an illustrator for magazines like Vogue. From a further marriage or liaison stemmed her son Michael Robinson. Her daughter Anne Ione Brady had, according to the report of a US-American visitor of 1974, a shop for artisanal articles in Paris, and held a regular contact to her mother at that time. She had a son named C.J. Dallet.

Artistic works