Tina Modotti. Donne, Messico e libertà

An artist, sublime and committed, Tina Modotti is 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. An actress, model, and lover of the great Edward Weston, she shaped her creativity in the post-revolutionary Mexican artistic renaissance, in the Estridentist avant-gardes, and in her frequentation of painters and poets, from Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, from Pablo Neruda to Rafael Alberti and Pablo Picasso. Her creativity, expressed in the few years she could devote to photography, fully recounts a free and nonconformist spirit that animates the body of breathtaking beauty, to which she herself assigns little importance. She would live in the United States, Mexico, Europe and Russia, engage in frontline efforts to bring relief to civilian victims of conflicts such as the Spanish War, share the life of Vittorio Vidali, and unlike her companion, never be able to return to her beloved homeland (Udine) because of her anti-fascist activities and an untimely death at just 46 years of age. But it was thanks to Vidali, who later became a senator, that the rediscovery of her artistic archives began in the 1970s, and with the establishment of the Tina Modotti Committee, the reconstruction of the most comprehensive collection of her works and documents concerning her adventurous life began. The exhibition, curated for Mudec Photo by Biba Giacchetti with the Tina Modotti Committee of Udine, presents exceptional materials: original silver-salt prints from the 1970s made from Tina’s negatives made available by Vidali, letters, documents from Tina’s sister and period footage. A formidable narrative, to meet at close quarters a free spirit who traversed misery and fame, art and social commitment, persecutory injustice, but also boundless admiration for her full and unwavering respect for herself, her thought, and her freedom.