honu

There are numerous good reasons for writing and reading the story of Tina Modotti’s life. She, like many other surrealist women artists, deserves her place in art historical records at the same level as her male contemporaries. On top of this, Tina’s life was a dramatically fascinating one; filled with stories and exploits of adventure, creation, politics, sex, danger, and risk. Tina Modotti, formerly known under the name of Assunta Adelaide Liugia, was born on the 16th of August in 1896 in Udine, Italy. Tina was raised in a working-class family that immigrated to Austria in 1898, where her father, Giuseppe, found work on a bicycle factory. Her family returned to Italy shortly after in 1905; the same year in which Giuseppe immigrated to the United States to join his brother in Pennsylvania. Tina Modotti remained in Italy with her mother and her siblings until the family became gradually reunited with her father in California. In 1913, Tina joined her father and her sister, Mercedes, who had moved to the United States two years earlier. Upon her arrival, she worked as a seamstress and doll maker. She was also involved in amateur dramatics within San Francisco’s Italian community. In 1915, Tina Modotti made, arguably, the first of her pivotal artistic encounters. She met the French-Canadian painter and poet Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey, known as ‘Robo’, at the Pan Pacific International Exposition. In 1917, she married him. Together, they moved to Los Angeles where Modotti found work as an actress in silent movies in Hollywood. In 1920, she starred in the film The Tiger’s Coat and had supporting roles in Riding With Death [1920] and I Can Explain [1922]. During this time period, Tina met the North American photographer Edward Weston [1886-1958], whom she later fell in love with and began an affair with. Edward Weston was an acquaintance of Roubaix and often visited his studio, which had become a popular gathering point for a bohemian circle of artists and writers. In 1921, Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey traveled to Mexico and sent letters back to Modotti, enthused about the cultural renaissance that was taking place during the aftermath of the 1910-1920 revolution. While Modotti was on her way to join her husband in Mexico in 1922, she received the news that he had died from a sudden illness. A year later, Modotti and Weston traveled to Mexico City together and they set up a studio there. It is during this time in Mexico, that Modotti became acquainted with the art of photography. Mexico was also the place where she became involved in radical politics and where she struggled to reconcile her photography with her politics. In a correspondence with her lover, Edward Weston, she said, “I cannot—as you once proposed to me ‘solve the problem of my life by losing myself in the problem of art. Not only I cannot do that but I even feel that the problem of life hinders my problem of art.” Weston had created a sort of contract with Modotti in which he would teach her photography in return for her running the household and acting as an interpreter. He strongly felt that teaching her photography was a way in which to grant her autonomy. He reports in his Daybooks, “She wants to learn photography and is doing well. She has no wish to return to the stage and photography would make her to some extent independent.” In very little time, Weston and Modotti began to socialize and work alongside members of the Mexican cultural elite, including key figures in the cultural renaissance such as Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Vasconcelos, Gerardo Murillo, Jean Charlot, Roberto Montenegro, Nahui Olin, Miguel and Rosa Covarrubias, and Frida Kahlo [although only for a brief time]. In the years that followed, the couple undertook numerous collaborative projects, and in the year 1924, they both exhibited prints at a group show at the Palacio de Mineria in Mexico City. Their first joint exhibition took place a year later at the State Museum in Guadalajara, where a number of their prints were purchased for the Jalisco State Museum. In the years that followed, they continued to work on larger and more complex bodies of prints, including an extensive series done for the North American Anita Brenner’s book on Mexican arts and crafts entitled Idols Behind Altars. The work was favorably reviewed by Diego Rivera, who said, “Tina Modotti, [Edward Weston’s] pupil, has done marvels in sensibility on a plane, perhaps, more abstract, more aerial, even more intellectual, as is natural for an Italian temperament. Her work flowers perfectly in Mexico and harmonizes exactly with our passion.” At this point in time, Modotti began to work independently from Weston, on commissions of her own. For example, she photographed the frescoes of Rivera and Siqueiros and published photographs in the journal Mexican Folkways. At the same time, Modotti became Weston’s muse and model. It is his series of nudes of Tina that allowed him to evolve into a mythical artist figure. Modotti and Weston’s once passionate relation, however, slowly began to crumble and finally came to a screeching halt in 1926 when Weston returned to California. Modotti remained in Mexico and the two of them corresponded until 1931, according to records. In 1927, Modotti’s life took a political turn and she became a member of the Partido Comunista Mexicano. Sarah M. Lowe, one of Modotti’s prime biographers, associates Tina’s experience as a factory worker in both Europe and the United States as a determining factor in her later political activity. Her political affirmations, however early they were sparked, were much more defined and highlighted during her stay in Mexico. She involved herself in movements such as “Manos Fuera de Nicaragua” and the committee of support to the Italians Sacco and Vanzetti. At the same time, her photographs began to appear in international political journals, magazines, and newspapers. In accordance with her political beliefs, Modotti’s choice in partners was strongly based on political affiliation. After her rupture with Weston, she began an affair with the artist and political activist Xavier Guerrero, whom she had met in the United States in 1922. In the same year that they met, Guerrero was sent to the Soviet Union and received a letter from Modotti breaking off their relationship. Since her work was appearing in the Communist Party’s newspaper El Machete, Modotti had met and begun an affair with the Cuban political activist Julio Antonio Mella. In 1929, she witnessed Mella’s death at the hands of the Cuban government. This year marked a significant shift in Tina’s life; both emotionally with the death of Mella, and professionally, with her final photographic project in Mexico [a series of photographs documenting the women and children of the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec]. In December of the same year, Modotti held her first solo exhibition at the Universidad Autonoma in Mexico City, which was received as a revolutionary exhibit in Mexico. This exhibition coincided with the publication of Tina’s only article on photography. In this article, she states, “Photography, precisely because it can only be produced in the present and because it is based on what exists objectively before the camera, takes its place as the most satisfactory medium for registering objective life in all aspects, and from this comes its documental value.” By 1929, Modotti was starting to resemble the independent woman that Weston had envisioned. She was offered the position of official photographer of the Museo Nacional in Mexico City, even if she turned the post down for political reasons. Her commitment was rewarded with utmost respect in cultural circles, though her activism was becoming increasingly threatening to the Mexican government. In 1930, the newly elected President, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, was nearly assassinated. Tina was suspected and falsely accused of participation, which led to her deportation from Mexico under article 33 of the Mexican constitution. Modotti returned to Europe aboard a ship named the Edam, where Modotti met her new Italian lover and political activist, Vittorio Vidali. [Some historical accounts allude to Vidali being responsible for the death of Modotti’s previous lover, Mella]. Once in Europe, Modotti settled briefly in Berlin; a time of despair and creative frustration where she wrote to Weston after undergoing technical difficulties and not knowing which path to take. She says, “I feel there must be something for me but I have not found it yet…I have begun to go out with the camera but, nada.” This time period is one that lacks documentation in Tina Modotti’s life. She appears to have maintained a low profile in order to take part in secret political missions in the name of fighting fascism. Towards the end of 1930, Vidali joined Modotti in Berlin and persuaded her to follow him to Moscow. From there, she wrote Weston a final letter [dated January 12, 1931] in which she announces a new found direction in life and art. She pursued her activism in Russia and her photographic career started to slowly wind down. She declined an offer to work as the official photographer for the Soviet Communist Party in order to devote herself to working with the International Red Aid. In time, she ran her own Red Aid center in Paris with the help of Vidali. On the eve of the Civil War, the two were dispatched to Spain where Tina Modotti took on the false identity of Maria del Carmen Ruiz. There, she worked on the Spanish Red Aid Newspaper entitled Ayuda, gathering information on political prisoners. After the Republicans were defeated in 1939, Modotti and Vidali were forced to return to Mexico, where they lived together. Modotti ended her life by helping Republican exiles in Mexico and she was successful in annulling her deportation decree by President Lazaro Cardenas. Modotti remained very low profile up to her final moments, although she maintained her political activities. Her birth certificate states that she died on January 5, 1942 from a heart attack in the back of a taxi.