NYU Unveils New Mural by Renowned Artist Elena Climent

By Richard Pierce

Earlier this month, NYU’s Faculty of Arts and Science marked the end of a major renovation of its six-story Languages and Literature Building with a reception and unveiling of its newly commissioned mural, At Home with Their Books, by New York-based Mexican artist Elena Climent, a distinguished painter in the realist tradition whose work has been seen in some of the principal museums and galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. The mural is the artist’s largest work to date.

      At Home with Their Books, measuring 30 ft. wide by 10 ft. high, comprises six panels and depicts intimate scenes of the spaces in which famous New York writers— Washington Irving, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Frank O’Hara, Jane Jacobs, and Pedro Pietri—composed their well known novels, poems, or essays, presented in chronological order.

      Journalism professor Marcia Rock produced and directed a documentary that chronicles the research and evolution of the mural.

      The mural, divided into three horizontal zones, was inspired by one of the great treasures of western medieval art, the Bayeux Tapestry, which itself features a long, narrow embroidered visual narrative. Depicted at the bottom of Climent’s mural are shelves containing the books the artists read and wrote along with some personal photographs and art prints. At top is a sequence of illustrations depicting the works of the writers.

      “I left the writer out of the scene to give the impression that she or he will be back at any moment,” said Climent, who believes the empty space also will “allow the viewer to imagine the possibility of walking into the room.”