Under the Mexican Sky:
Vintage photographs by Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and colleagues
Mexico City in the 1920s-30s was the scene of one of the great artistic flowerings of the 20th century. Like Paris, it served as a magnet for international artists and photographers. Foremost among the expatriate photographers was the Los Angelino, Edward Weston, who embedded himself in the artistic milieu surrounding the muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Weston reinvented himself as an artist during his three years in Mexico, 1923-26. The painterly, Pictorialist blur that characterized his studio portraiture in the ‘teens melted away under the brilliant Mexican sun, to be replaced by crystalline landscapes as well as evocative still lifes that prefigured his later shells and peppers. Meanwhile his paramour and protégée, the Italian silent film star Tina Modotti, created photographs that would place her in the pantheon of great photographers of the era. Drawn from a single private collection, this exhibition features rare vintage Mexican masterworks by both Weston and Modotti from the 1920s, as well as stellar photographs from the 1930s by the Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson and by Mexico’s own Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
Tina Modotti, Experiment in Related Form, 1924
Edward Weston, Rosa Covarrubias, 1926
Tina Modotti, Bandolier, Corn, Sickle, 1927
Helen Levitt, Mexico, 1941
Manuel Alvarez Bravo, La Siesta de los Peregrinos, 1930s
Edward Weston, Woman with Lace Headdress, 1926
Edward Weston, Xanichio, Lake, Mexico [Patzcuaro or Xanichio], 1926
Tina Modotti, Elisa Kneeling, 1924
Tina Modotti, Workers' Parade, 1926
Edward Weston, Heaped Black Ollas [in the market, Oaxaca], 1926
Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, Mexico, 1924
Edward Weston, Dr. Federico Marin, Jean Charlot, and Tina Modotti, 1925
Tina Modotti, Women of Tehuantepec, 1929
Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Retrato de lo Eterno (Portrait of the Eternal), 1935
Edward Weston, Charrito (seated man in front of pulqueria mural), 1926
Westons © CCP, Arizona Board of Regents
Number of photographs: 51
Rental fee: $11,700 for 8 weeks plus shipping and insurance. Additional weeks are available for 10 percent per week.
An expanded version of this exhibition is also available, which includes an additional 20 Paul Strand photogravures created for a 1940 portfolio Photographs of Mexico. Number of photographs: 71. Rental fee: $13,700 for eight weeks plus shipping and insurance. Additional weeks are available for 10 percent per week.