Ione Robinson

Ione Robinson (Oct. 3, 1910, Portland, Oregon–Nov. 1989, Paris) was an American artist, writer and socialite.

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.

Soon after this, she traveled to Mexico City, where she was welcomed by the son and daughter of José Vasconcelos Calderón, 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.

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 and 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 characterized 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.

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.

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 representative in Mexico at the time, whom she married in the end of 1929.

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.

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.

Another acquaintance was the artist from Utah, Paul Higgins (or Pablo O'Higgins, who often claimed to be born in San Francisco), 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 Kitagawa.

Robinson deepened her knowledge mainly of mexican colonial art travelling to various places and studying the collection of the Academia de San Carlos.

They divorced in 1931 due to differences of the mindsets of the two, Freeman being a stalwart communist with Jewish orthodox background, Robinson, on the other hand, a fellow-traveller of liberal middle-class provenance.

A John Simon Guggenheim fellowship enabled 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.

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 this book, she reported also her experiences from the Spanish Civil War, that she witnessed in Barcelona in 1938.

In 1938, she tried to arrange a mural project for 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.

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.

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 (1946).