Clifford Wight

Born Clifford Seymour Weight in Swindon, England in early 1891, he studied agriculture before arriving in Maine in 1913 and taking up farm work in Canada before joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1915. By 1925 he had arrived in California and trained as an architect and learned sculpture from his friend Ralph Stackpole. He traveled to Mexico in the late 1920s and met Diego Rivera, assisting him with (and appearing in) Rivera's frescoes there, at the same time changing his last name to Wight. Wight worked extensively as Diego Rivera's secretary, translator and technical assistant from about 1929 until about 1936, working with Rivera on his San Francisco mural commissions in 1929-31 (at the time he lived on Jessop St., now Hotaling Place), appearing several times in the CFSA mural. He was deeply involved in Rivera's one- man fresco exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he likely met his wife, professional model Jean Abbott, whose sister was the first director of the MOMA. (Frida Kahlo painted a portrait of Abbott, but was dismissive of her as a pretty face, not a bright mind.) Wight worked with Rivera on the murals at the Detroit Art Institute, and the controversial Rockefeller Center mural. He returned to England in June 1936 and during WWII worked on the detail that disposed of unexploded Nazi bombs. After the war, he taught sculpture at Camberwell Art School in London until 1950, separating from Jean and traveling Europe with a former student, eventually settling near Cheltenham, England. He died May 7, 1961, in Barcelona as the result of falling from a tram. 

Works at Coit Tower:

FarmerSteelworker