Page 28 - DIVA1 2026

international

The lost mural of the hôtel du

Palais, Genève

David Macfadyen

I’ve often reached to my bookcase for Emery since it provides context to the insightful, clever
Kelen’s memoir, Peace in eir Time: Men Who and witty cartoons that appeared under the
Led Us In and Out of War, 1914-1945. The book ‘Derso et Kelen’ signature. These depicted major
was recommended to me for its ‘wit and pithy political events of the era and caricatured the
content’, so I purchased it, half a century after personalities involved. The two artists worked
it was published (via Alfred A. Knopf, New uniquely as a ‘duet’ and, between 1923 and 1950,
York, 1963). There’s a dedication to an editorial produced limited-edition portfolios, books, and
assistant, whom I later learned was Kelen’s wife. individual cartoons printed in European and
After her husband’s death, she tried to find a US newspapers and periodicals. This article
home in Geneva for over 900 cartoons that he concerns l’Assaut de la Tribune, a mural that
drew jointly with fellow Hungarian, Alois Derso. they created in Geneva in 1936. It was their chef-
When the United Nations Archives declined, she d’oeuvre and its whereabout is unknown.
and her daughter offered these, together with
correspondence, writings and material published Kelen’s memoir gives this account of how the two
by the two artists, to Princeton University, which artists came to compose l’Assaut de la Tribune. In
accepted the collection and catalogued it. 1936:
‘the prosperous landlady of our family pension,
A decade ago, three former British UN Mme Tonetti, took over the management of a
colleagues and I came together to study hotel close to the new Palais des Nations, and
the legacy of Sir Eric Drummond, the first she decided that what this hotel needed more
Secretary-General of the League of Nations, than anything else was a mural by Derso and
particularly his founding of the International Kelen. She did not offer us cash; just freedom
Civil Service in which we all worked. Derso from bills.
1
and Kelen cartoons provided visual evidence of
Drummond’s character. Kelen’s memoir, Peace All my furniture except for a couch on which I
in eir Time, was a source for our research, slept was now thrown out of my room, and a six
by ten foot canvas affixed to the wall. It was long
enough so that Derso, who is lefthanded, and I,
who am righthanded, could both stand in front
of it and work simultaneously. We had no trouble
finding an appropriate subject. Geneva has in its
history an episode called l’Escalade. . . .
We took [this] as the subject of our painting,
calling it Assault on the Rostrum [l’Assaut de
la Tribune]. We dressed our delegates in the
costumes of three hundred years ago, and
had them attacking the rostrum of the League
Assembly with ladders
. . .’

[Figure 1 here]
Figure 1. Derso (left) and Kelen at work on
l’Assaut de la Tribune, 1936.
La Tribune de Genève (18 November
1936), https://www.e-newspaperarchives.
ch/?a=d&d=TDG19361118-01.2.8.8

w w w. d i va i n t e r n at i o n a l . c h