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Mexican Lives fine prints
are available for purchase through:
Below are remarks presented for a combined exhibition of Tina
Modotti's and Lucia Messeguer's fine black and white photographic
works.
The ArteF Fine Art Photography Gallery in
Zurich will offer the first ever public showing of Tina Modotti's
work in Switzerland, February 3, 2006. To complement Modotti's work
will be Lucia Messeguer's Vintage and Original Prints.
Zurich, Switzerland,
December 23, 2005 -- A photograpy exhibition is set to open in
Zurich, Switzerland February 3, 2006: Mexican Lives by Tina Modotti
and Lucia Messeguer, Vintage and Original Prints.
Tina Modotti, the most
enigmatic photographer of the twentieth century observes the
historically turbulent time of the Mexican Renaissance through the
lens of her camera and follows the country's laborious steps as it
moves towards the modern age. Between the illustrious Hollywood
actress and communist revolutionary phases of her life there is a
period of photographic creativity that lasted a mere seven years.
The works originating from this time (virtually all of them unique
prints) vary between still life, political portrait or
photo-reportage.
The ArteF gallery is
exhibiting mostly vintage photographs from the second phase of work,
which was devoted more to reportage. Suggestive portraits of the
Mexican population alternate with prosaic shots of landscapes and
are complemented by documentation on Diego Rivera's murals.
This is the first ever
opportunity in Switzerland to become acquainted with the work of a
photographer who is exhibited very rarely in Europe.
Frieda Kahlo, portrayed by
Lola Alvarez Bravo and Leo Matiz, has, in recent decades, become a
symbol of the centuries old bitter struggle of an entire country.
She embodies like no other woman the tremendous will to live, even
under the most difficult conditions, without making any concessions.
Although she was an
established artist, with a body physically scarred following a car
accident and involved in an unfulfilled love affair with Diego
Rivera, the portraits on display at ArteF are neither sad nor
resigned. In form they show the energy of a remarkable fighting
spirit that goes way beyond the limits of the photograph. In
contrast to her own pictures, the works exhibited here show Kahlo's
unbridled pride and unbelievably mystical presence. An intense and
powerful meeting with an artist who is world-famous for her
self-critical art, is guaranteed.
Lucia Messeguer on the
other hand, in her series originating from 1979, offsets the
powerful works of Kahlo and Modotti. Her metaphor is that of a
country between omnipotent history and personal fragility in today's
Mexican community.
With photographs taken in
two cloisters, her simple group of works evokes the charged tension
between the isolated individual and what is, for far too many, the
brutal social reality of this Moloch of a Mexico. Through her
photographic lens, Lucia Messeguer combines the intensity of a
Sugimoto with the vacuum of a Tarkovsky. A poetic influence can be
felt in these buildings, which express the vulnerability of personal
integrity in Mexico's melting pot of a society. Images between dream
and reality, human sentimentality and walls steeped in history.
TINA MODOTTI
"I put too much art in my
life, consequently I have not much left to give to art." Tina
Modotti to Edward Weston
Although it is sixty years
since her unexplained death, Tina Modotti is still a legend without
equal in the history of photography and is now being lauded as the
'undiscovered' photographer of the twentieth century. Her period of
photographic creativity lasted a mere seven years (from 1923 to
1930) and her few photographs (400 pictures have been preserved,
virtually all of them unique prints) are today very rare and
scattered over many collections throughout the world. The intense
drive for life and passion as well as her revolutionary convictions
result in a life that is like a candle lit at both ends, so that as
it gets shorter, it also burns more intensely. A light that burned
in the darkest and most difficult decades of the last century.
Puro es tu dulce nombre,
pura es tu frágil vida: de abeja, sombra, fuego, nieve silencio
espuma,de acero, línea polense construyó tu férrea, tu delgada
estructura...
(Pure your gentle name,
pure your fragile life: bees, shadows, fire, snow and foam, combined
with steel and wire and pollen to make up your firm and delicate
being…)
Extract from the poem Tina
Modotti by Pablo Neruda, 1942
Nowadays Tina Modotti is
regarded as one of the most outstanding women of the twentieth
century. In 1991, a still life with roses (the artist was just 28
years old at the time) was bought for US$ 167,000 at Sotheby’s in
San Francisco by the co-founder of Esprit, Susie Tompkins (which is
still a record price for a photograph). This sale was the making of
the extremely rare photographs on the international art market in
the years that followed. Susie Tompkins Buell now owns several of
Modotti's works, as does the singer Madonna, the Museum of Modern
Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
respected George Eastman House, Rochester, the J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Collections FNAC,
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the
Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library and the Tate Modern
in London, and there are individual works in many private
collections.
This exhibition marks the
first public showing of Tina Modotti's work in Switzerland.
LUCIA MESSEGUER
Lucia Messeguer studied
photography and graphic design at the Escuela de Diseno Grafico y
Fotografia in Mexico City. Today she is still working as a freelance
photographer for various clients throughout the world and has been
living in Singapore since 1996. She has consolidated her knowledge
of photography over the years by teaching photography, by working in
museums and by editing photographic volumes, as well as extending it
by taking a course in music theory. Whether portraits, fashion,
travel reportage or commercial photography, Lucia Messeguer is quite
at home in all these areas. The artist is very proud of having
founded the first free school in Mexico City to concern itself
exclusively with the medium of photography.
The pictures, which she
disassociates from her chosen way of earning a living as a press and
commercial photographer, are works of tranquillity, intensity and
concentration. The works of this Mexican photographer are composed
with an almost musical ear. When you look at her landscapes in
Hokkaido, you are reminded of Mahler and the pictures originating
from the Zurich Forch are reminiscent of a light Schumann. The
photographs being exhibited at ArteF are poetically playful, like
Debussy's Preludes, yet also have the exceptional exquisiteness of a
Tarkovsky.
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