Gender and art

De Tina Modotti, on connaît surtout en France l’œuvre photographique – en 2000, une rétrospective lui était consacrée aux Rencontres photographiques d’Arles, une exposition dont l’un des commissaires n’était autre que Sam Stourdzé, qui a pris cette année la présidence de la manifestation. On connaît moins les autres facettes de sa vie romanesque, comme sa courte carrière d’actrice de films muets à Hollywood.

"Sister in arms to Mexico’s revolutionaries, Tina Modotti went from anonymous muse to one of the most brilliant photographers of the 20th century. Her story and legacy is extraordinary, says Anna Saunders, as a new Royal Academy exhibition will show.

The woman is turned away from the camera, her body curved into submission. Bright sunlight glances off her back, recasting her limbs into an object of abstract art. Nude on the Azotea was taken in 1924, and in the decades that followed the art world would focus almost entirely on the man who took it – the photographer Edward Weston – and little on the woman who featured in it. For years, this nameless, faceless woman, who appeared in so many of Weston’s nudes, was known only as his mistress and muse.

But, as biographers would discover, there was much more to Tina Modotti than that. Until her sudden – and some say mysterious – death at 45, the Italian-born artist lived an extraordinary life, morphing from silent-film actress to model, muse, photographer, Mexican revolutionary and (possibly) spy. Yet it wasn’t until the 1990s – when a cache of her photographs was discovered in a farmhouse in Oregon and several platinum prints, Roses and Calla Lilies, were auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars in New York – that her own photographic legacy and incredible story would come to light."

'Mexico: A Revolution in Art’ is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London,  from 6 July to 29 September 2013

http://royalacademy.org.uk/