Utah Artist Pablo O'Higgins' works are featured in exhibit in his native Utah

A Utahn by birth. A Mexican by choice. An artist by profession. A socialist by persuasion.

The man known as Pablo O'Higgins led a life full of interesting quirks and a few enigmas.

Still highly esteemed in his adopted country, he is almost unknown in his native state, although that is changing, particularly with exhibits such as the one currently on display at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

"Pablo O'Higgins: Works on Paper" will be on display through Sept. 19. It features 26 lithographs and two linoleum cuts from local private collections, all of which feature "heroic depictions of Mexican laborers," exhibition curator Donna Poulton says.

"He loved and adored the peasants in Mexico. But his works mostly show faceless workers, rather than specific people. He wanted it so that anyone could put themselves in the picture, could identify with it," she said.

Born Paul Higgins on March 1, 1904, in Salt Lake City, he showed an early interest in piano and visual arts. His mother even allowed him to experiment with acid etching in their kitchen.

Higgins' father, Edward, was an assistant attorney general, and was one of the attorneys who urged the Utah Supreme Court to uphold the trial court's conviction of Joe Hill and go forward with his execution. Higgins was 11 at the time of the execution. He never made reference to it after he moved to Mexico, but it might have influenced his future political views.

Higgins attended East High for his sophomore and senior years in the early 1920s, but he chose not appear in the yearbooks. He did take a class from Utah artist LeConte Stewart as a senior.

He spent his junior year near El Cajon, Calif., where his family had a ranch and where he became acquainted with children of Mexican workers and learned colloquial Spanish.

After graduation he went to San Diego to study at the School of Fine Arts, but he became dissatisfied there and left to set up a studio with a Mexican friend, Miguel Foncerrada. Through Foncerrada, Higgins became aware of the work of Diego Rivera, who had recently returned to Mexico from Europe and was painting murals. When Higgins wrote to Rivera, the Mexican artist invited him to come "learn of the artistic movement that has begun" in Mexico.

Higgins accepted that invitation and arrived in Mexico City in 1924. The 20-year-old became an assistant to Rivera, who was working on murals at the Secretariat of Public Education and at the National Agricultural University at Chapingo.