In 1923, the Italian-born film actress and budding photographer Tina Modotti moved to Mexico City with her lover Edward Weston, and their time there was transformative for them both. In three crucial years in Mexico, Weston was introduced to a wholly new visual world that he would absorb and use in his work going forward. Modotti, who had lived in the city once before and already moved in the city’s artistic and political circles, was influenced by Mexico in a different way. While Weston had far more photographic experience, Modotti was a quick study and was soon creating images which were distinct in both content and aesthetic from her mentor’s.
Modotti’s Telegraph Wires, made in 1925, exemplifies how independent an artist Modotti had become during her time in Mexico. With its bold horizontal shapes and repetition of diagonal and crisscrossing lines, Telegraph Wires has more in common with the Constructivist explorations of Alexander Rodchenko or László Moholy-Nagy’s New Vision than with Edward Weston’s brand of American Modernism. Modotti’s composition is infused with the energy coursing through its wires and is as dynamic a symbol of the modern age as any she would create.
Tina Modotti’s Telegraph Wires reproduced in El Movimiento Estridentista (1926) by Germán List Arzubide Modotti made two studies of telephone or telegraph wires, and both were celebrated by the Estridentistas, a radically progressive collective devoted to modernizing Mexico culturally. Modotti’s images of wires were perfect metaphors for the modernization and communication that the movement espoused. Germán List Arzubide, a poet, revolutionary, and a leader of the Estridentistas, reproduced the image offered here in his 1926 book El Movimiento Estridentista where he declared, in apparent reference to Modotti’s photograph, that the Estridentistas gathered their power ‘under the electrical branches.’ Modotti’s other study of wires was reproduced in 1929 in the literary art journal transition, alongside photographs by Man Ray and László Moholy, placing her work at the very cutting edge of the photographic avant-garde.
Tina Modotti’s alternate study of telegraph wires in transition, no. 15, February 1929 Tina Modotti was not a prolific printer of her own work and, consequently, lifetime examples of her images are quite rare. It is believed that only two other early prints of this image exist: in the collection of the Fundacion Cultural Televisa, Mexico, and in a private collection, Mexico.
Condition Report
To view the Condition Report please Sign In
Sign InDescription
View our Conditions of Sale.
Provenance
The photographer to Vittorio Vidali
Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Private Collection, 2000
Sotheby's, New York, Important Photographs from a Private Collection, 27 April 2004, lot 21
Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc., New York, 2008Literature
Constantine, Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life, p. 112 (this print)
Fraenkel Gallery, 20twenty, pl. 13 (this print)
Other prints of this image:
Agostinis, Tina Modotti: Gil anni Luminosi, p. 98
Benito, Luz Y Tiempo: Colección Fotográfica Formada Por Manuel Alvarez Bravo Para La Fundación Cultural Televisa, p. 351
Hooks, Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary, p. 126
List Arzubide, El Movimiento Estridentista, p. 54
Modotti, et al., Tina Modotti: The Mexican Renaissance, p. 15
Lowe, Tina Modotti: Photographs, fig. 16, pl. 37
IMPORTANT PHOTOGRAPHS FROM A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN COLLECTION
265
Telegraph Wires
circa 1925
Platinum print.
9 3/8 x 7 1/8 in. (23.8 x 18.1 cm)
Vittorio Vidali's 'Commissar of the Fifth Regiment' stamp, a typed caption label, and reduction notations in an unidentified hand in pencil on the verso.
Estimate
$150,000 - 250,000
Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com
Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com
Photographs
New York Auction 9 October 2024
325
This lot is no longer available.
354
This lot is no longer available.
