But to Mexicans he is celebrated. Those familiar with their country's politically charged artistic heritage, however, remember him as Pablo O'Higgins.

Higgins was the son of Edward Higgins, an attorney who often represented powerful mining interests. As assistant Utah attorney general, he argued the case before the state Supreme Court that expedited the execution of Joe Hill - the same union-organizing Joe Hill who is still regarded as a hero of

the labor movement.

Paul didn't share his father's steely sense of civic duty. His last year at East High School was spent taking Spanish and art. His art teacher, Leconte Stewart, later became Utah's most famous painter.

Higgins' interest in Spanish was sparked by visits to the family ranch near San Diego. He was enchanted by the lilting tones of California Spanish, which had been the lingua franca in the region for 200 years.

While attending an art academy in San Diego, Higgins' mother sent him a magazine article about Diego Rivera, the revolutionary Mexican muralist who mixed his paints with equal parts linseed oil and leftist politics.

Higgins was hooked. Here was art that wasn't just something pretty to hang over the sofa. It was meaningful. He saw in Rivera's vivid murals of Mexican laborers something to aspire to.

He wrote to Rivera. The great artist responded, as he probably always did, writing that one needed to come to Mexico to see the murals for oneself.

When Higgins showed up, Rivera found he had talent and put him to work assisting on the murals.

The squalor of Mexico City must have been alarming to someone used to the ordered streets of Salt Lake City. Never caring much for material things, in Mexico he found he had even less. His cramped quarters sported nails to hang his clothes. But by all accounts he was having the time of his young starving-artist life.

Identifying as he did with the working class through his paintings, Higgins was radicalized by his association with Rivera. He joined the Mexican Communist Party. In fact, there would later be a falling out because Higgins thought Rivera too out of touch with the proletariat, or, as we say in Utah, working stiffs.

But if he hoped to fit in with Rivera and his crowd, Higgins carried unfortunate baggage - like his dad, for instance. Being the son of the man who helped kill the most famous American labor organizer of his day is hardly a way to endear oneself to fire-eating leftists.

Higgins solved the problem by inventing a new past. His father was recast as a labor-loving lawyer working for oppressed miners. The apostrophized "O" that he tacked to his last name suddenly made him Irish, a suitably oppressed people if ever there was one.

It mostly worked. He took commissions for murals around Mexico, and while never rising to the level of Rivera, his work shows a passionate feeling for the working people of Mexico.

He was once romantically linked to Gina Modotti, the gifted photographer, and is said to have followed her to Moscow. He tried studying in an academy, but quickly lost interest in the heroic Soviet style. He spent a year hanging out at train stations sketching the gritty reality of Stalin's worker's paradise. He departed Moscow, leaving Gina and his idealism behind.

He eventually married a well-to-do lawyer named Maria. Through her efforts, he found work among well-to-do Mexicans interested in having their portraits painted by someone once associated with the great Rivera. Some of his later work is really quite remarkable and deserving of notice in his native state.

Higgins died in Mexico in 1983. The centennial of his birth was celebrated in his adopted country with expositions and a revival of interest in his work.

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Pat Bagley is The Tribune's editorial cartoonist and with Gayen Wharton is author of Dinosaurs of Utah.