Tina Modotti, the eye of the revolution
In Paris, the Jeu de Paume National Gallery until 12/05/2024 pays homage to Tina Modotti (1896-1942) with a great exhibition, the largest ever dedicated to Paris to this photographer and political activist of Italian origin.
Tina Modotti's life (Udine, Italy, 1896 - Mexico City, 1942) was marked by some of the most important historical events of the first half of the twentieth century: the economic emigration of the Europeans in America, the birth of silent cinema on the The western coast of the United States, the post-revolutionary agricultural movements in Mexico, the rise of political murals, the recovery of Mexican indigenous culture, the emancipation of women in the public sphere, the contrast between Stalinisti and Trotzkisti after the Russian revolution of 1917 And the Spanish civil war.
In September 1928 he became the companion of Julio Antonio Mella, a young Cuban revolutionary, with whom Tina lives a deep love and at the side of which intensifies the work of committed photographer and political militant. In 1930 Modotti was expelled from Mexico for his communist activities. He lived for several years in the Soviet Union, where his photographic activism became activism. In the mid -thirties, the Soviet Communist Party sent it to Spain. During the civil war, he organized the evacuation of "war children", coordinated the management of military hospitals and carried out propaganda missions. After the defeat of the Republicans in 1939, he crossed the Pyrenees together with thousands of exiles. Exhausted and disillusioned by the outcome of the Spanish War, he had to leave Europe again. He died in 1942 in Mexico City.