The exhibition is produced by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE and Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura, in collaboration with Sudest57 and realized thanks to the fundamental scientific contribution of the Tina Modotti Committee.
One of the greatest female interpreters of the artistic avant-garde of the last century, Tina Modotti expressed her idea of freedom through photography and civic engagement, becoming an icon of the country that welcomed her but soon transcending the borders of Mexico in her albeit short life to be so recognized on the world art scene. To this day Tina Modotti remains a symbol of an emancipated and modern woman whose art is inextricably linked to social engagement.
Tina Modotti traversed fame and misery, art and political and social engagement, arrests and persecution, and at the same time she was also able to inspire boundless admiration for her full and unwavering respect for herself, her thought, and her freedom.In the 1930s she lived straddling the United States, Mexico, Russia, and Europe, deeply divided between fascism and anti-fascism. Committed to the front lines to bring relief to civilian victims of conflicts such as the Spanish War, Modotti shared her life in these same years with Vittorio Vidali but, unlike her companion, was never able to return to her beloved homeland (Udine) because of her anti-fascist activities and an untimely death at just 46 years old during her Mexican exile. Artists such as Picasso, Rafael Alberti and Pablo Neruda paid tribute to her with the famous poem.
Tina Modotti’s artistic rediscovery began in the 1970s, thanks to Vittorio Vidali, who once he returned to Italy and later became a senator, began to make her artistic legacy public, bolstered also by a growing international interest, later made evident in 1977 with the major retrospective at Moma in New York. With the birth of the Tina Modotti Committee and Vidali’s decisive contribution, the reconstruction of the most comprehensive collection at the time of her works and documents concerning her adventurous life began.
Freedom
The theme of Freedom in Tina Modotti is essentially linked to her multifaceted personality, and is developed with uncompromising consistency throughout her entire existence, punctuated by chapters that intersected the political history of the world over the span of her albeit brief existence.
Impoverished and forced to emigrate Tina could have pursued a career as an actress, and exploited her beauty for the easy obtainment of financial comforts. But her choice of freedom led her instead toward study, and the deepening of her innate artistic gifts, cultivated in the circle of acquaintances of her first companion-the painter Robo-until she met Edward Weston, a not-yet-famous photographer who initiated her into photographic techniques.
Mexico
If Weston was to be her mentor, it is due to Tina that she chose to go to Mexico to share an artistic renaissance that rested on social and cultural foundations in the particular post-revolutionary phase, in the estridentist avant-gardes, in the acquaintance of painters and poets: from Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, from José Clemente Orozco to David Alfaro Siqueiros. Tina would follow in the footsteps of photographers such as Manuel Alvarez Bravo and his wife Lola, cross paths with the great photographer Imogen Cunningham, poets and writers such as David Herbert Lawrence and Mayakovsky, musicians, a circle of experimental and free artists of which Tina in Weston would soon become leading figures.
A sublime and committed artist, Tina will not hesitate to abandon art because of her growing commitment to political activism. Because of this she will be unjustly accused of complicity in the assassination of her partner, Cuban journalist Mella, and then of taking part in the assassination attempt on the Mexican president. She will be kicked out of Mexico; the United States would have welcomed her back if she had renounced her political beliefs. But her freedom of thought and her consistency pushed to the limit of risking her own safety made her decline the offer.
Thus began a phase as a political refugee that took her to Germany, Russia, and then to become directly involved in the Spanish War in aid of the victims of the conflict, with particular attention to children. At the end of the Spanish War Tina, fatigued in body and spirit, would be welcomed back to Mexico, where she would live her last years in the shadows alongside Vittorio Vidali.
Tina Modotti is today a photographer who has left an indelible mark on contemporary history. Her famous shots make up the collections of the world’s most important museums and her fame is planetary, as evidenced by the auction success of one of her shots featured in the exhibition, Perspective with Electric Wires of 1925, the original of which was auctioned in 2019 for 692,000 euros (Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg, NY, April 2019).
