Tina Modotti's 300 photographs on display in Rovigo

Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo presents 'Tina Modotti – L’opera', an exhibition of 300 photographs recovered from over 500 attributed works after an international mapping effort. The show focuses almost exclusively on Modotti's photographic output, sidelining her biography as actress and political activist. Modotti's 1929 manifesto 'Sulla fotografia' advocated for documentary photography free of aesthetic pretensions, aiming to capture reality truthfully, especially the lives of the poor and working class. Born in Udine in 1896, she emigrated to Austria and the US, working as an actress in San Francisco and Los Angeles before moving to Mexico in 1923 with photographer Edward Weston. Expelled from Mexico in 1930 after being implicated in an assassination attempt on President Pascual Ortiz Rubio, she lived in Berlin, Moscow (where she joined the Comintern), Paris, and Spain during the civil war, finally returning to Mexico in 1939. She died mysteriously in a taxi in Mexico City on the night of January 5–6, 1942, at age 46. The exhibition is organized thematically: early works, American period, still lifes, urban scenes, political subjects, Mexican folklore, portraits, women from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, motherhood, and documentary photos of communist rallies. The show also includes abundant video and editorial material, revealing Modotti as an empathetic, feminist figure ahead of her time, committed to social justice.