Tina Modotti (1896-1942)/Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002)

The Tina Modotti photographs in this and the following two lots are from a group printed by Manuel Álvarez Bravo between 1976 and 1979 from original negatives loaned by Vittorio Vidali, Modotti's close friend and companion during the last 15 years of her life 

The photograph offered here comes originally from the collection of Vittorio Vidali (1900 - 1983), Tina Modotti's close friend and companion during the last 15 years of her life.  Entrusted with Modotti's negatives after her death, the Vidali family gave the photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, who had known Modotti, an opportunity to print from some of these negatives in the 1970s.  Experimenting with varying papers and printing techniques, Bravo produced a small number of posthumous prints before the negatives were donated to the Museo del la Fotografia in Pachuca, Mexico, in 1979. 

Prints of the image offered here, Hands of the Puppeteer, are amongst the scarcest of Modotti's oeuvre.   In 1996, a print of the image once owned by Edward Weston, with his inscription on the verso, was offered in these rooms (Sale 6827, Lot 172); this print was purchased by a private collector and subsequently sold at Phillips New York in 2006 (Sale NY040106, Lot 284).  This, Edward Weston's print, is believed to be one of only two early prints of the image now in private hands.   A print of this image is also in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

This photograph is the most famous of a series of studies Modotti made of the hands and puppets of Louis Bunin, a young artist from Chicago who had come to Mexico to study with Diego Rivera.  Bunin and Modotti became good friends, sharing not only an interest in theatre, but also in politics.  Bunin's puppets for Eugene O'Neill's controversial play, The Hairy Ape, were photographed many times by Modotti and may have been the unseen marionettes in the image offered here.  More common than the horizontal format of the present lot is a vertical variant, reproduced in Lowe, plate 108.