Tina Modotti - Photographs New York Friday, April 5, 2024 | Phillips

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  • In 1923, the Italian-born film actress and budding photographer Tina Modotti moved to Mexico City with her lover Edward Weston. While Weston had far more photographic experience, Modotti was a quick study and was soon creating images which were distinct in both content and aesthetic from her mentor’s. Modotti had lived in the city once before and was already a fixture in its overlapping artistic and political circles. Her intuitive feel for country and its people fired her creativity. From the beginning, her concerns were balanced between the social and the formal, the documentary and the aesthetic.

     

    In the present image, Modotti has photographed a Mexico City street from an elevated vantage point, creating a complex composition of lines and overlapping shadows. She has placed the tree within the frame very precisely, its topmost branches nearly grazing the top edge of the image. Within this network of lines and shadows, a dog has taken refuge in an island of shade. This photograph demonstrates Modotti’s ability to synthesize a unified and harmonious composition from a multiplicity of elements. Modotti authority Sarah Lowe writes that this early photograph illustrates her ‘determination to ground her images in her own reality.’ 

     

    This photograph was originally in the collection of Caroline Wagner (1896-1992), a collector and jewelry designer whose work was shown at The Museum of Modern Art in the exhibition Modern Handmade Jewelry in 1946 alongside designs by Alexander Calder, Harry Bertoia, Richard Pousette-Dart, and Margaret DePatta. A frequent visitor to Mexico, Wagner was politically active and committed to women’s’ suffrage.

     

     

    Read more about the collection

    • Provenance

      Collection of Caroline Wagner
      Swann Galleries, New York, 14 October 1992, lot 517

    • Literature

      Lowe, Tina Modotti: Photographs, pl. 11

FIGURE + FORM: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

330

Untitled (Mexico City)

1924
Platinum print.
3 1/2 x 4 5/8 in. (8.9 x 11.7 cm)
Signed and dated in pencil on the mount.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for $30,480

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com
 

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 5 April 2024