Tina Modotti

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tina Modotti , actually Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini , (born August 16, 1896 in Udine , Italy ; died January 6, 1942 in Mexico City ) was an actress , photographer and revolutionary . Her common nickname Tina is a shortened form of Assuntina of her first name.

Life

Childhood and youth in Italy and Austria

Tina Modotti was the second of six children of Giuseppe Modotti, a worker who got through life as a mechanic and carpenter, and the seamstress Assunta Mondini. When she was two years old, the poor family moved to Klagenfurt in search of work . Whether Tina Modotti already attended school in Carinthia, in Ferlach , or only after her return to Udine in 1905 is controversial.

Shortly after the family returned to Udine, their father, who was involved in the labor movement, left to see his brother who had emigrated to Pennsylvania in the United States . Although Tina Modotti was a good student, at the age of twelve she had to forego high school and go to work as a seamstress to help support the family. At the same time she helped her uncle Pietro Modotti in his photo studio, who taught her the basics of photography. In 1911, her older sister, Mercedes, went to see her father, who was now in San Francisco . Two years later, Tina Modotti also set out and embarked in June 1913 in Genoa - not yet 17 years old - for the USA.

Moved to the United States

After Tina Modotti traveled to the USA in 1913 after her father and older sister, who now lived in San Francisco , she first worked there as a seamstress, made batiks and made small appearances on stages in San Francisco's “Little Italy”.

In 1915 she met the Canadian painter and poet Roubaix del 'Abrie Richey ( Robo ), whom she married in 1917. From 1918 the couple lived in Los Angeles , where Modotti starred in three films from 1920. She was the favorite model of renowned photographer Edward Weston from around 1921 and became his lover in October 1921. Roubaix del 'Abrie went to Mexico in 1921. Tina followed him because he described a land of magical beauty to her. However, he died of smallpox two days before her arrival, on February 9, 1922.

During her stay in Mexico, Tina was fascinated by the “light-filled” country, its artists and the general atmosphere of optimism. When her father died soon after in San Francisco, she returned there for a short time and published her husband's texts and poems in The Book of Robo in 1923 .

The time in Mexico

Julio Antonio Mella on his deathbed, 1929
Concha Michel, 1923
Stairs, Mexico City, 1924
Two women from Tehuantepec
Rene d'Harnoncourt puppet, 1929
Woman from Tehuantepec , ca.1929
The Puppeteer's Hands , 1929

In late July 1923 Tina Modotti, Edward Weston and his eldest son Chandler moved to Mexico. It was agreed that Modotti would take care of Weston's studio and housekeeping and in return learn the photography trade. Weston's wife and three other children remained in the United States.

Two months after their arrival in Mexico, the couple settled in Mexico City, where the two moved in the post-revolutionary bohemia, among artists such as the muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros , Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco and the photographers Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo . The “three great” painters founded the revolutionary magazine El Machete in 1924 , which in 1928 became the organ of the Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM).

In 1924 Modotti presented her work for the first time in an exhibition together with Weston. The opening took place in the presence of the President. Her photographs from this period, influenced by Weston's style, are now selling at top prices. During short stays in San Francisco in 1925 and 1926, she visited her mother, who had meanwhile become ill, met the photographer Dorothea Lange and purchased a Graflex , which was the most popular camera among America's press photographers at the time, and which was far more handy than Weston's camera. Back in Mexico, she toured the central highlands for three months to collaborate with Weston on creating the artwork for Anita Brenner's book on the roots of contemporary Mexican art, Idols Behind Altars .

In 1926 the couple separated and Weston went back to the United States. Modotti had a relationship with the communist painter Xavier Guerrero , who soon after went to the Moscow Lenin School . She joined the PCM in 1927, worked for the Sandinista movement Manos fuera de Nicaragua and took part in demonstrations for Sacco and Vanzetti , where she met the Italian revolutionary and agent of the Comintern Vittorio Vidali .

She continued to make a living from portrait photography, but also worked for Forma magazine , the radical New Masses in the United States, which also reprinted Guerrero's article on revolutionary art, and for Horizonte . Her circle of acquaintances now also included the photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo , the writer John Dos Passos , the actress Dolores Del Rio and the young Frida Kahlo (some sources note that it was Modotti who introduced the Kahlo to Rivera).

From September 1928 she had an intense love affair with the emigrated Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella . At that time, her political commitment was already clearly expressed in her photos. When Mella was shot dead in front of her eyes on January 10, 1929, newspaper suspicions linked her to the murder. It is unclear whether she turned down a position as a photographer at the Museo Nacional, which she was offered a little later, in protest of the character assassination or for other reasons. In any case, she went to Tehuantepec for a few months and documented the lives of ordinary people there.

In June, the communist party was banned in Mexico. The opening of the Modotti exhibition in the Autonomous University of Mexico City on December 3, 1929 turned into a political demonstration, both because of the political explosiveness of the pictures (many of them from Tehuantepec) and because of the provocative presentation by the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros .

The Mexican Folkways magazine published Modotti's manifesto Sobre la fotografia (About Photography) in late 1929 .

Expulsion from Mexico and residence in the Soviet Union

An unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Mexican President Pasqual Ortiz Rubio on February 5, 1930 was used as an excuse to arrest the photographer. Her fate was initially unknown abroad and she was still missing at the beginning of March 1930. Although there was no evidence of her involvement, she was expelled from Mexico. Together with Vidali she arrived on the steamer Edam in Rotterdam , went to Berlin, where she met Bohumír Šmeral , the former first chairman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the reporter Egon Erwin Kisch, as well as the photographer Lotte Jacobi , in whose studio she took her pictures from Mexico could issue.

She worked as a photographer again, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung published her pictures several times, including a cover picture with Modotti's portrait of Mella.

In October, however, she decided to go to Moscow , where she met again with Vidali, whom she referred to as "her husband" when she applied to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1932 . Soon afterwards she gave up photography, allegedly throwing her camera into the Moscow River , working for the International Red Aid as a translator for foreign press reports and also writing articles herself. At least through Vidali, she was intertwined with the secret service from that time on. Her work took her to Vienna , Warsaw , Madrid and Paris in 1935 .

Spanish Civil War

From July 1936 she was back in Madrid under the name Maria , together with Vidali, who was Comandante Carlos J. Contreras of the Fifth Regiment. In the following three years she worked in the medical service, at times under Dr. Norman Bethune .

In 1937 she helped prepare the International Congress of Intellectuals Against Fascism in Valencia and, together with Carlos / Vittorio , prepared the publication of Miguel Hernández 's collection of poems Viento del Pueblo . She came into contact with Robert Capa , Gerda Taro , Ernest Hemingway , Antonio Machado , Dolores Ibárruri , Rafael Alberti , André Malraux , who participated in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War . In preparation for the Congreso Nacional de la Solidaridad , she stayed in Madrid in 1938. After the civil war was lost, she arrived in Paris with Vidali. Your request to the party to be allowed to work underground in Italy was not granted.

Back in Mexico

Mexico's new President Lázaro Cárdenas overturned Modotti's deportation warrant, and she and Vidali returned to Mexico City after the US rejected an application for asylum. She was now living rather poorly on translations, worked for the Alleanza Internazionale Giuseppe Garibaldi and took little part in social life. Occasionally she met the émigré writers Anna Seghers and Constancia de la Mora .

On the night of January 5th to 6th, 1942, she died of a heart attack in a taxi. In public opinion, fueled by Rivera, Vidali was suspected of killing his former comrade-in-arms on Stalin's behalf, but suicide was also rumored. A poem by Pablo Neruda , published as an obituary in the newspapers, helped to smooth things over. Tina Modotti was buried in the celebrity cemetery Panteón Civil de Dolores . Under the bas-relief with the portrait created by Leopoldo Méndez , the first verses of Neruda's poem are carved into the tombstone.

Photo books and collections

Portrait photographs

  • Germán List Arzubide, 1925

  • María Marín de Orozco, 1925

  • Anita Brenner , 1926

  • Antonieta Rivas Mercado, 1929

  • Manuel Rodriguez Lozano, 1928

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1977: Tina Modotti. Museum of Modern Art, New York, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  • 1989: Tina Modotti. New Society for Fine Arts, Berlin, accessed on December 19, 2021 .
  • 1989: Tina Modotti. Photographer and revolutionary . Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland.
  • 1996: Art and Power in a Europe of Dictators. 1930 to 1945 . German Historical Museum, Berlin.
  • 1998: Tina Modotti - Manuel Alvarez Bravo . Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.
  • 2004: Tina Modotti - Edward Weston: Mexico. Museum of Photography, Braunschweig.
  • 2006: Photographs by Tina Modotti in the Arte Gallery, Zurich.
  • 2006–2007: Mexico as muse. Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  • 2010: Tina Modotti. Photographer and revolutionary. Kunst Haus Wien, Museum Hundertwasser, Vienna, Austria.
  • 2011: Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA. Retrieved December 19, 2021 .
  • 2012: Photography in Mexico Selected Works from the Collections of SFMOMA and Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  • 2014: Tina Modotti. Emigrant, photographer, revolutionary in the Museum of History and Ethnology, St. Gallen, Switzerland .
  • 2014/2015: Modern photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection 1909-1949. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.Retrieved December 19, 2021 (American English).
  • 2015: Photography in Mexico: Selected Works from the Collections of SFMOMA. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
  • 2015/2016: Retrospective , Udine

Filmography

Tina Modotti as an actress

  • 1920: The Tiger's Coat
  • 1921: Riding With Death
  • 1922: I Can Explain

Still image and posters for The Tiger's Coat

  • TinaModotti.PNG
  • The Tiger's Coat (1920) - 1.jpg
  • The Tiger's Coat (1920) - 2.jpg

Films about Tina Modotti (selection)

literature

  • Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti. Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1982 (exhibition catalog; in German: Mark Francis (eds.): Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti. Verlag Neue Critique, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-8015-0180-9 ).
  • Patricia Albers: Shadows, Fire, Snow. The Life of Tina Modotti. Clarkson N. Potter, New York NY 1999, ISBN 0-609-60069-9 (in German: Schatten, Feuer, Schnee. The life of Tina Modotti. List, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-471-77039-9 ), or "Life struggles in me". Tina Modotti. List, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-548-60053-0 (comprehensive research, with detailed notes and index).
  • Letizia Argenteri: Tina Modotti: Between Art and Revolution. Yale University Press, New Haven 2003, ISBN 0-300-09853-7
  • Christiane Barckhausen : Tina Modotti. Truth and legend of a controversial woman. Biography . 3rd Edition. Neues Leben, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-355-00621-1 (with time table, listing of photos and writings by Tina Modotti plus person index).
  • Christiane Barckhausen (Ed.): Tina Modotti. Life - Work - Writings. Agimos-Verlag, Kiel 1996, ISBN 3-931903-02-8 .
  • Christiane Barckhausen: Tina Modotti. Divide the moon into three parts. Wiljo Heinen, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-939828-88-4 (biographical sketch).
  • Ángel de la Calle: Modotti. A woman of the 20th century. Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86789-137-0 . Graphic novel.
  • Giuliana Muscio:  Saltarini Modotti, Assunta. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 89:  Rovereto – Salvemini. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2017.
  • Elena Poniatowska : Tinísima. Novela. Ediciones Era, Mexico 1992, ISBN 968-411-305-6 (in German: Tinissima: Roman. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-40816-X ).
  • Reinhard Schultz (Ed.): Tina Modotti. Photographs and documents (= Art and History Series. Vol. 2). Social archive e. V., Berlin 1989 (catalog book for the exhibition of the same name by the Social Archives Berlin e.V.).
  • Reinhard Schultz (Ed.): Tina Modotti. Your photographic work. Your life. Your movie. Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, ISBN 3-86150-631-9 (incl. DVD: The Tiger's Coat ).
  • Tina Modotti. Photographs of a revolutionary. Wiljo Heinen, Berlin and others 2012, ISBN 978-3-939828-86-0 (illustrated book; texts by Christiane Barckhausen and Reinhard Schultz).

Web links

Commons : Tina Modotti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Tina Modotti and Diego Rivera

Individual references and comments

  1. ↑ Portraits of Klagenfurt power women. In: kaernten.orf.at. March 11, 2021, accessed March 17, 2021 .
  2. ^ A b Giuliana Muscio: Saltarini Modotti, Assunta. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , 2017, accessed December 19, 2021 (Italian).
  3. ↑ The couple may have just pretended to be married. The Modotti biographer Patricia Albers was unable to find any evidence of this marriage despite an extensive search for files in California and Oregon.
  4. ↑ Roubaix De l'Abrie Richey. Vedado Films LLC, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey: The Book of Robo. With a short biography by Tina Modotti Richey and an introduction by John Cowper Powys . Retrieved December 19, 2021 (American English).
  6. ↑ The 13-year-old Chandler Weston, about whom little is otherwise known, was probably (also) taken along as his father's assistant. He was replaced in 1925 by the second son, Brett Weston, who already laid the foundation for his own important career as a photographer in Mexico.
  7. ↑ White Terror in Mexico. Die Rote Fahne, March 5, 1930, p. 6 , accessed December 19, 2021 .
  8. ^ Christiane Barckhausen: Tina Modotti. Divide the moon into three parts . Berlin 2012.
  9. ^ Tina Modotti (1896-1942). Photographer, revolutionary and internationalist. Retrieved December 19, 2021 .
  10. ↑ Letizia Argenteri: Tina Modotti: Between Art and Revolution . New Haven 2003, pp. 187 (English).
  11. ↑ Modotti, Tina. Swiss Photo Foundation, accessed on December 19, 2021 .
  12. ↑ Anna Seghers: Our friends say . Obituary for Tina Modotti. In: Martin Hielscher (Ed.): Fluchtort Mexico . Hamburg / Zurich 1992.
  13. ↑ Letizia Argenteri: Tina Modotti: Between Art and Revolution . New Haven 2003, pp. 195 .
  14. ^ Patricia Albers: Shadows, Fire, Snow. The Life of Tina Modotti . New York 1999, p. 331 .
  15. ↑ Tina Modotti. Press release. nGbK archive, 1989, accessed on November 15, 2021 .
  16. ↑ a b Biography of Tina Modotti in the online work on historical photography in Switzerland, fotoCH, accessed on September 26, 2020.
  17. ↑ Art and Power. 1996, accessed November 15, 2021 .
  18. ↑ Photography: Concentrating on the essentials. In: Deutscher Ärzteverlag GmbH. April 24, 1998, accessed November 15, 2021 .
  19. ^ Mexico: Tina Modotti - Edward Weston. Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, 2004, accessed on November 15, 2021 .
  20. ^ Jill Lynch, Clara Hatcher Baruth: SFMOMA Presents Mexico As Muse: Tina Modotti And Edward Weston. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Press Department, accessed December 19, 2021 (American English).
  21. ↑ Tina Modotti. Photographer and revolutionary. Kunst Haus Wien, Museum Hundertwasser, 2010, accessed on November 15, 2021 .
  22. ↑ Monica Boirar : Tina Modotti - emigrant, photographer, revolutionary . In: Fotointern, November 8, 2014, accessed September 26, 2020.
  23. ^ Photography in Mexico: Selected Works from the Collections of SFMOMA. Retrieved December 19, 2021 (American English).
  24. ↑ Tina Modotti: una retrospettiva svela la fotografa udinese , accessed on December 31, 2016
  25. ^ Roy Clements: The Tiger's Coat. Dial Film Company, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  26. ^ Jacques Jaccard: Riding with Death. Fox Film Corporation, November 13, 1921, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  27. ↑ George D. Baker: I Can Explain. Sawyer-Lubin Pictures Corporation, March 20, 1922, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  28. ↑ Nick Vivarelli: Monica Bellucci to Play Feminist Revolutionary Tina Modotti (EXCLUSIVE). In: Variety. August 7, 2018, Retrieved December 19, 2021 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Modotti, Tina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mondini, Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Actress, photographer and revolutionary
BIRTH DATE August 16, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Udine
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1942
PLACE OF DEATH Mexico City