Pacifique

1940 · rif. 64697 — San Francisco CA: San Francisco Bay Exposition Co. Published by Pacific House Lithographed by H.S. Crocker Co. Inc. & Schwabacher-Frey Inc. 1940. One oblong atlas folio map 25.5 x 19 in. colour lithographed on beautiful thick paper stock minor age toning slight dustsoiling on right portion still a VG bright original pictorial map. First edition of this separate issue souvenir map issued by the Golden Gate International Exposition GGIE World’s Fair which first opened in 1939 and carried over to 1940 celebrating the stunning series of giant murals painted in 1939 by Covarrubias for the Pacific House presenting the Pacific Ocean as an idyllic yet with remote and exotic areas prior to World War II. This splendid and vibrant pictorial map vividly presents the ranges of building methods and Indigenous Peoples dwellings from Yurts in Mongolia to peaked longhouses of the Maori in New Zealand not dissimilar to the cedar Longhouses of the Northwest Coast tribes along with thatched huts teepees and the pueblos of the Mesoamerican peoples of the Southwest. The six original murals ranged in size from 9 x 13 feet ”Native Dwellings” and “Transportation” while the other four such as “Flora & Fauna” measured 16 x 24 feet. Originally the set of six was exhibited until 1953 at the American Museum of Natural History shipped back to San Francisco in 1949 when the original “Art Forms of the Pacific” mysteriously went missing and exhibited at the Ferry Building until 2001. Covarrubias 1904-1957 was a noted Mexican muralist illustrator caricaturist painter and ethnologist who not only produced artwork and caricatures for the Mexican Ministries of Education and Communication but also later became noted artist and caricaturist for Vanity Fair and the New Yorker set designer and commissioned later by the GGIE to produce the murals series. San Francisco Bay Exposition Co., Published by Pacific House, Lithographed by H.S. Crocker Co. Inc. & Schwabacher-Frey, Inc., unknown