Product Description

This is the definitive portrayal of the brilliant, iconoclastic woman who throughout her life (1896 1942) oscillated between her passion for her art and her fervor for radical politics. Tracing Modotti from her early years in Italy to 1920s Hollywood, then to vibrant Mexico City and on to Berlin and Moscow, and eventually to war-torn Spain, Hooks magnificently portrays Modotti's tempestuous life her romantic, artistic, and political liaisons with Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, and Pablo Neruda. Incorporating interviews with Modotti's contemporaries and new archival material, Tina Modotti dramatically revives a fascinating life and secures Modotti's rightful place alongside Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe as one of the most accomplished women artists of our era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #735679 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
An Italian-born film star, Modatti learned photography with her lover Edward Weston in California during the early 1920s. She went on to develop a camera career of her own; she acquired several additional lovers, including Diego Rivera, in Mexico City's prevailing ferment of avant-garde art and politics; and, during the next 20 years, she became a major Communist revolutionary figure in Germany, Moscow and Spain. She was accused and exonerated of the assassination of one revolutionary lover; she risked her life to carry funds from Moscow to political prisoners in Romania; and she endured hardship, privation and deadly bombardments in Madrid and Barcelona. Repatriated to Mexico, she died in 1942 at the age of 46. Many of Modotti's portraits of celebrities and of common people as well as her journalistic photos are included here, along with characteristically simple, strong compositions--massed straw hats of workers on parade, telegraph wires akimbo, the heart of a calla lily. One of her studies, Roses, Mexico , fetched $165,000 at a Sotheby's auction in 1991. Hooks is a freelance foreign correspondent living in Mexico.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This detailed study of the Italian-born photographer and political activist seeks to gather recognition for Modotti (1896-1942), who has been overshadowed by her lovers Edward Weston and Diego Rivera. Having acted in Hollywood silent films and theater, she accompanied Weston to Mexico, serving as his apprentice, model, and lover. Her images of Mexico's workers, its poverty and political unrest, and her abstract depictions of flowers and interior architecture have recently been sold at record-setting prices. In 1924, she joined the Mexican Communist party, supporting antifascist ideals. When a revolutionary leader with whom she was passionately involved was assassinated, Modotti devoted the remainder of her life to communism. Despite a bothersome journalistic style, Hooks ( Guatemalan Women Speak , EPICA, 1991) conveys the dramatic life of an extraordinary woman. Recommended for large collections.
- Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Modotti (1896-1942) is known primarily as the prot{‚}eg{‚}ee and lover of Edward Weston, who persuaded him to go to Mexico in 1923, a move that clarified and advanced his artistic vision. In Hooks' biography, Modotti appears as the complex woman she was--earnest, beautiful, creative, naive, determined, emotional, tireless, vulnerable. That some of these characteristics conflicted is the key, perhaps, to her political victimization as the lover of Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, murdered in 1929, and then as a hard-line Stalinist and companion to her final lover, Italian Communist Vittorio Vidali. An immigrant to San Francisco, Modotti began as an actress and model, which led her to Weston and then her own photography. At its fullest development during her Mexican years, her work blended Weston's sensuality, her own exquisite sense of design, and, more importantly, a genuinely political content in compelling images that supported a revolutionary socialist message. Although never a political theorist or leader, Modotti was persecuted and deported. Her life became sad and rootless, increasingly involved in ever riskier organizing and couriership for the Communists and ending in a lonely death in a Mexico City taxi. Hooks makes this tragic life gripping, and the book is well-illustrated with Modotti's and others' photographs. Gretchen Garner

Customer Reviews

A passionate, courageous, and inspiring woman!
Tina Modotti was a restless soul on an journey through art, politics, and history. A courageous fighter and humanitarian until the end. Tina is a true heroine with a strong passion for life, and love for photography.