The Elements in Tile

If you’ve driven Central Expressway between Royal and Forest Lanes, you’ve seen it, but you probably didn’t know what you were seeing.

That big mural on the west side of the former Stewart building, that mass of strange shapes, is a masterpiece, a mosaic designed by Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias that depicts the creation of life. Hidden in plain sight since 1954, the mosaic is moving to a home where it can be viewed at a more leisurely pace: the new entrance to the Dallas Museum of Art and its new wing, The Museum of the Americas, due to open in September 1993.

Dallas tile artist Billy Michaelis has been chosen for the massive yet delicate task of moving the 12-by-57-foot mosaic. The piece, titled “Genesis,” will be remounted on concrete slabs that will he set out on the grounds of the DMA. Michaeiis will repair the damage of almost 40 years of Texas weather while museum-goers watch the work in progress.

The mosaic bears close observation. Covarrubias, who died in 1957, was a contemporary and equal of the great muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. In this work, he displayed the four elements of life-fire, water, earth and air-and used symbols from a broad range of New World cultures: from North America’s Hopi and Navaho civilizations to the Aztecs and Mayans of Central America. He believed that all these cultures were linked by a common approach to art and life, a theory that meshes with the theme of The Museum of the Americas, which will showcase the diversity and cohesiveness of New World art.

Serendipity brought the DMA and the mural together. “It’s enough to make one believe in mystical forces,” says SMU anthropologist David Freidel, a consultant to The Museum of the Americas.

Last year, at the same time that plans were moving along for the new museum, the Stewart family was looking for a new home for their mosaic. Waldo and Peter Stewart had commissioned the work in the 1950s, but had sold their company (a farm machinery distributorship) and put the building on the market.

DMA director Richard Brettell and the Stewarts got together, the Stewarts donated the mosaic to the museum, and the museum in turn sold it to the city for $52,000, the amount it will cost to repair and remount the work.