Tina Modotti

platinum print, Vittorio Vidali's Fifth Regiment stamp and a typed caption label, with title, date, and 'originale,' on the reverse, framed, circa 1924-25

Estate of Tina Modotti

Collection of Vittorio Vidali

By descent to Carlos Vidali

Sotheby's New York, 7 May 1985, Sale 5318, Lot 250

Various owners

Cook Fine Art / La Guaira Fine Art, New York, 1998

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tina Modotti: Photographs, September - November 1995; and traveling to:

Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, December 1995 - February 1996

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March - June 1996

New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Tina Modotti, Photographs, May - June 1997

Valencia, IVAM Centre Julio González, Mexicana: fotografía moderna en México, 1923-1940, January - May 1998

This print:

Sarah M. Lowe, Tina Modotti: Photographs (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995), pl. 19 

Tina Modotti, Photographs (New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 1997), cover and pl. 3

Mexicana: fotografía moderna en México, 1923-1940 (Valencia: IVAM Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, 1998), p. 48

Sarah M. Lowe, Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: The Mexico Years (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 2004), pl. 22

Likely this print:

Vittorio Vidali, Maria Caronia, et al., Tina Modotti, fotografa e rivoluzionaria (Milan, 1979), unpaginated

This platinum print, with lush golden and sepia tones, is in generally very good condition. The upper edge is slightly age-darkened, which corresponds to a thin band of yellowed adhesive on the reverse. Upon close examination, a 1/2-inch crease is visible in the lower right quadrant. A few tiny deposits of original retouching are also visible when the print is examined carefully, which appear to have faded with age. There is faint linear rubbing near the edges, possibly from contact with the mat's window. The print is trimmed to the image, and the edges are rubbed. The corners are rounded, and there are very small, attendant losses. Expertly-applied retouching in the upper left quadrant appears to be in the negative and not a flaw in the physical print. As previously noted, along the upper edge on the reverse is a thin band of yellowed adhesive. Attendant abrasions suggest that this photograph was previously affixed to a mount. There are also 5 small masking tape remnants on the reverse. The typed label reads: 'Geranio (originiale xxxxxxxx 1924).' The following notations are in an unidentified hand in pencil: '36'; 'x' (circled); and '159 [circled] NAT. (100).'
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The photograph offered here is among Tina Modotti’s earliest images, made shortly after she moved to Mexico City in 1923 with her lover and photographic mentor Edward Weston.  Modotti made a series of floral and plant studies in 1924 and 1925, including ‘Geranio,’ ‘Flor de Manita,’ and her celebrated images of roses and the calla lily.  While Modotti’s Campesinos Reading El Machete (Lot 29) balances the photographer’s artistic and political concerns, Geranio is a formal study of textures, light, shadow, beauty, and decay.  The luminous droplets of water that cling to the geranium’s petals, the angularity of the brawny stem, and the jagged rim of the cracked flowerpot are rendered in this sophisticated composition with rigorous and affecting detail. 

Flowers and still life studies were central to Modotti’s oeuvre from the beginning.  Both Modotti and Weston worked extensively in still life, focusing their cameras on objects readily available, to differing effect.  While Weston professed no meaning in his ‘straight’ photographs, Modotti’s flowers and plants, according to Modotti authority Sarah Lowe, ‘convey a sense of suffering, or rather, prompt a projection of human suffering onto the flowers, while reminding the viewer that death and decay are evident even in the most beautiful object’ (Lowe, p. 24).

A print of Geranio may have been included in Modotti’s December 1929 solo exhibition at the Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico City.  While no exhibition checklist survives, a contemporary review notes that photographs of ‘flores . . . y de macetas’ (flowers, flowerpots) were featured.  In Tina Modotti: Una Neuva Mirada, 1929, Jesús Nieto Sotelo and Elisa Lozano Alvarez suggest that Maceta con Geranios (flowerpot with geraniums) – possibly the image offered here – is one of only a handful of photographs that match this description. 

The photograph offered here comes originally from the collection of Vittorio Vidali (1900-1983), Modotti's close friend and political companion during the last 15 years of her life.  As with most of her photographs, Modotti made very few prints of Geranio.  The photograph offered here is believed to be one of only two prints extant.  A palladium print, formerly in the collection of Leah Brenner, is now at the Detroit Institute of Arts.