Intimes Date

Tina Modotti only lived 46 years. But she lived them wild, passionate and intense. At the ago of 16 the Udinese born model and actress immigrated from Italy to the U.S. Her most successful film was “The Tiger’s Coat” (1920). The following year Tina Modotti met photographer Edward Weston. She became his favorite model and lover.

Weston and Modotti moved to Mexico were he was inspired by the landscape and folk art of Mexico to create abstract works. She was more captivated by the people of Mexico and blended this human interest with a modernist aesthetic. Modotti found a community of cultural and political avant-gardists. She became a photographer herself – documenting the blossoming Mexican mural movement, the works of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Her one-woman retrospective exhibition at the National Library in December 1929 was advertised as “The First Revolutionary Photographic Exhibition in Mexico”. Modotti and Weston gravitated toward Mexico City’s bohemian scene, using their connections to create a portrait business. It was also during this time that Tina Modotti met political radicals and Communists, including some leaders of the Mexican Communist Party who would all eventually become romantically linked with Modotti: Xavier Guerrero, Julio Antonio Mella, and Vittorio Vidali. A much more politically active Modotti joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927. She now focussed more of her work towards politically motivated themes. AHer photographs began appearing in publications such as “Mexican Folkways”, “Forma”, “El Machete”, “Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ)”, “New Masses”.

Modotti became a target of both the Mexican and Italian political police. She was expelled from Mexico in February, 1930, and placed under guard on a ship bound for Rotterdam. The Italian government made concerted efforts to extradite her as a subversive national. Only with the help of International Red Aid activists she evaded detention by the fascist police. Back in Mexico City in 1942, during a visit by her close friend Hannes Meyer, Modotti died from heart failure, under what is viewed by some as suspicious circumstances. After hearing about her death, Diego Rivera suggested that Vidali had orchestrated her death. Modotti may have ‘known too much’ about Vidali’s activities in Spain, which included a rumoured 400 executions.

Labels: Famous Nudes Tina Modotti, Nude Art