When an Argentine architect, Luis Laplace, saw a neglected mural by the North American artists Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish at the Regional Museum of Michoacán, in the Mexican city of Morelia, seven years ago, he resolved immediately to try to save it.

“What struck me was the scale of it, the beauty, the history,” he said of the mural, titled “The Struggle Against Terrorism.” It is a kaleidoscope of persecution and resistance made in 1934-1935, when the artists were barely in their 20s.

Painted on a wall in a colonial palace in the heart of Morelia, the pink-stoned capital of Michoacán State, the surreal, Renaissance-influenced composition of broken bodies, ominous hooded figures and tools of cruelty was crumbling and faded. Whole sections of the piece were missing. The patio was being used to store chairs.

“I was quite astonished,” said Laplace, who is based in Paris but at the time was working on a project in Morelia.

On Friday, the 1,000-square-foot mural was unveiled anew in Mexico following a six-month restoration that has re-created missing sections and returned its original vibrancy. It is being inaugurated at a moment of heightened tensions between Mexico and the United States over the steep tariffs President Trump is moving to impose.

As well as a team of conservators and contractors, the effort involved the Guston Foundation, which paid around $150,000 for the project; several Mexican cultural institutions; a local grandee; and a lot of diplomacy, Laplace said. He joked that the people of Morelia had never “seen so many people interested in a single mural.”

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