A Newly Discovered Article by Tina Modotti, Published for the First Time in English
BY
TINA MODOTTI
Tina Modotti (front right) stars as Ma“Woman from Tehuantepec” (Tina Modotti / Wikimedia Commons)ria de la Guarda in the film The Tiger’s Coat, 1920. (Galerie Bilderwelt / Getty Images)
Revolutionary photographer Tina Modotti’s article on the murder of her Cuban communist lover Julio Antonio Mella lay forgotten in the Moscow archives for decades. On the 80th anniversary of her death, we publish it in English for the first time.
Tina Modotti lived a remarkable revolutionary life. Born in Italy in 1896 before moving to San Francisco at age sixteen, she soon became a star of stage and screen — and then made her name behind the camera, as a photographer. But in the years when her homeland was taken over by Fascist dictatorship, Modotti was also radicalized politically. During her 1920s spell in Mexico, her varied artistic ventures became intertwined with her comradeship with such figures as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Over the 1930s, her activism as a Communist would see her repeatedly shunted between countries as an exile — and eventually head to the Civil War in Spain.
An especially important focus of Modotti’s political activity until her death in 1942 was International Red Aid, a Comintern-attached organization that defended and offered relief to the victims of political repression. From 1927, she was also an active member of the Mexican Communist Party, a commitment that made its mark on her photographic work in this period. Modotti texts such as On Photography sternly insisted she sought not to be an “artist” but to capture social realities. Works such as “Worker’s Hands” and “Woman from Tehuantepec” documented the dignity, and the hardships, of the Mexican working people.
One of Modotti’s key comrades was Julio Antonio Mella, whom she met at a 1928 march in honor of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and whom she also had a romantic relationship with. Mella was a key figure in the Latin American left and is today celebrated by the Cuban Communist Party as one of its historic founders. Yet Mella’s life was tragically cut short, as he was murdered in Mexico City on January 10, 1929, when he was just twenty-five years old. The most likely culprit was Gerardo Machado’s dictatorship in Havana, of which Mella was a prominent opponent. The Mexican press instead sought to implicate Modotti herself, in a smear campaign heavily drawing on crude aspersions about her sexual morality. Members of Machado’s regime later boasted of hiring the killers.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/julio-antonio-mella-death-cuba-mexico-communist-party
The article we present here was originally written at the start of 1932, on the third anniversary of the assassination. By this point Modotti was in Moscow, following her expulsion from Mexico. It was likely drafted for the organ of the International Red Aid, but was apparently never published and for decades remained forgotten. The text was discovered in the Moscow archives after the fall of the USSR by researcher Christiane Barckhausen-Canale, a Modotti specialist who has written extensively on the revolutionary photographer’s life and works. Thanks to her, it was released online in Italian and Spanish by the Cuban embassy in Rome in 2020. On the eightieth anniversary of Modotti’s death, we present it in English for the first time.
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/julio-antonio-mella-death-cuba-mexico-communist-party
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Tina Modotti (born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini, August 16/17, 1896 – January 5, 1942) was an Italian American photographer, model, actor, and revolutionary political activist for the Comintern. She left Italy in 1913 and moved to the USA, where she worked as a model and subsequently as a photographer. In 1922 she moved to Mexico, where she became an active Communist.
Acting career
Attracted to the performing arts supported by the Italian émigré community in the San Francisco Bay Area, Modotti experimented with acting. She appeared in several plays, operas, and silent movies in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and also worked as an artist's model.[3]
In 1917, she met Roubaix "Robo" de l'Abrie Richey.[2] Originally a farm boy from Oregon named Ruby Ritchie, the artist and poet assumed the more bohemian name Roubaix. In 1918, Modotti began a romantic relationship with him and moved with him to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the motion picture industry.[2] Although the couple cohabited and lived as a "married couple", they were not married. She was listed as a U.S. citizen in the 1920 Los Angeles township census.[4] Often playing the femme fatale, Modotti's movie career culminated in the 1920 film The Tiger's Coat. She had minor parts in two other films.[3]
The couple entered into a bohemian circle of friends. One of these fellow bohemians was Ricardo Gómez Robelo. Another was the photographer, Edward Weston.
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Modotti
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Tina Modotti - Biography and Legacy
ITALIAN/MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHER
Born: August 16, 1896 - Udine, Italy
Died: 1942 - Mexico City, Mexico
Movements and Styles: Straight Photography, Documentary Photography
Biography of Tina Modotti
Childhood
Tina Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini, and given the nickname Assuntina, a diminutive of her mother's name, later shortened to Tina. She was the third of six children born to Giuseppe Modotti and Assunta Mondini, and the family lived in the Northeastern Italian town of Udine, at the base of the Austrian Alps. Although the historic town of Udine was prosperous and in general politically conservative, the working classes tended toward Socialism and political activism. Modotti's father was among those influenced by such activism; he often attended demonstrations and meetings, including the May Day demonstrations that took place every year. The family moved, and Modotti spent much of her childhood living in Austria, where her father worked as a mason, and her mother stayed home with the children working as a seamstress to generate additional income. In 1905, the family returned to Udine and Modotti left school to work in a textile factory. Although she seems to have had little exposure to art as a child, her uncle Pietro Modotti did run a successful photography studio (and school), where she may have worked as a teenager.
Also in 1905, Modotti's father Giuseppe emigrated to the United States by way of New York. In 1907 he moved to San Francisco, where he opened a photography studio in North Beach, the Italian hub of the city. In June of 1913 Modotti traveled to New York, then on to San Francisco to join her father and sister. After her arrival in San Francisco, Modotti worked odd jobs in the city's garment industry. In the mid-1910s she met Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey (known as Robo to his friends), an American bohemian painter and poet, who had a profound influence on Modotti's early artistic life. Through Richey, Modotti was introduced to the artists, writers, photographers, and other members of the cultural elite, including the prominent photography critic Sadakichi Hartman. By 1917 she was appearing as an actress on the theater stage, perhaps at the encouragement of Richey. Her path to the stage seems to have come by way of her flair for reciting poetry and her ability to captivate audiences. By age 26, Modotti had become a minor celebrity in the Italian community of San Francisco.
Modotti is said to have married Richey in Santa Barbara in 1918, though there is some speculation that the two were never legally married. They moved to Los Angeles later that year. In Los Angeles Modotti worked in theater and film. She also worked as a much sought-after model for artists and photographers, including for the notable Pictorialist photographer, Jane Reece. In 1920 and 1922 she secured several film Hollywood film roles. During their time in Los Angeles Modotti and Richey enjoyed a wide circle of friends that included writers, artists, actors, dancers, and musicians. They hosted frequent parties where the couple probably met photographer Edward Weston, who was running a portrait photography business in Los Angeles. Modotti modeled for Weston for the first time in 1921.
Early Training and Work
Modotti stayed behind in Los Angeles, and Robo Richey left for Mexico in late 1921. With the promise of both a job and a studio, Richey planned to paint and to soak up the highly charged political atmosphere of 1920s Mexico City. His time in Mexico was tragically brief however, as he contracted small pox only a few months later and died in February 1922. In the wake of Robo's death (arriving just two days late to be able to say a personal goodbye), Modotti traveled to Mexico and spent time with his closest acquaintances, including Ricardo Gómez Robelo, who had recently become the Chief of the Education Ministry's Department of Fine Art.
More:
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/modotti-tina/life-and-legacy/
