Tina Modotti: From Hollywood Starlet to Communist Revolutionary

Tina Modotti (born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini, August 17, 1896) transformed from a factory worker into a Hollywood actress, then a photographer, and finally a communist activist. After emigrating from Italy to San Francisco in 1913, she modeled and acted, catching the attention of director D.W. Griffith. In Hollywood, she became involved with poet Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey and later photographer Edward Weston, who taught her photography. Following Richey's death in Mexico, Modotti joined the Mexican Muralists, befriending Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, and Xavier Guerrero. Her photographs appeared in El Machete. She opened a studio with Weston, focusing on social issues. In 1925, she joined International Red Aid and became a member of the Mexican Communist Party in 1927. Her 1929 exhibition was advertised as 'The First Revolutionary Photographic Exhibition in Mexico'. After the assassination of Julio Antonio Mella in 1929 and an attempt on President Pascual Ortiz Rubio, she was expelled from Mexico in 1930. She lived in Berlin, Moscow, Warsaw, Paris, and Madrid, participating in the Spanish Civil War under the pseudonym Maria. She returned to Mexico in 1939 and died of heart failure in a taxi in 1942, with Diego Rivera suspecting her lover Vittorio Vidali orchestrated her death.