Vintage Portraits of Weston’s and Modotti’s Time in Mexico

In 1923, photographer Edward Weston took his oldest son, Chandler, left his wife and three other sons behind in Tropico (now Glendale), and joined his lover, Tina Modotti, in Mexico. There he stayed for most of the next three years.

Modotti (1896-1942) introduced Weston (1886-1958) to the artists and intellectuals of Mexico--Diego Rivera, painter Jose Clemente Orozco, and political cartoonist and muralist David Siqueiros, among others.

“They were the first to recognize Weston and what his works were about,” said David Fahey of the Fahey/Klein Gallery. “They gave him tremendous support.”

While serving as Weston’s assistant, model, muse and champion, Modotti had begun to take her own photographs. They influenced each other.

“He was apolitical; she was very political,” Fahey said. “She concentrated on the Everyman--peasants and locals. His photographs were more formal studies and straightforward portraits. He taught her photography. She taught him how to see things in a more subtle way.”

One can get a sense of their intertwined lives in Fahey/Klein Gallery’s exhibit of vintage silver gelatin and platinum prints by the two photographers. Of the 34 photographs, 12 are by Modotti, all of them taken during her years in Mexico. Weston’s photographs range from a 1921 pictorial-style image of Modotti with her husband--artist and poet Roubaix (“Robo”) de l’Abrie Richey, who died in 1922 in Mexico before she arrived there--to his sharp-focused 1930s nudes and California landscapes.

Two of Weston’s photographs of Mexican writer, poet and painter Nahui-Olin (Carmen Mondragon) come from a collection in Mexico. They have never before been published or exhibited. In his journal “Daybooks,” Weston described his portraits of Nahui-Olin, a free-spirited independent woman, as “. . . the best portraits I have done in Mexico.”

Fahey knows of only two other prints in existence of Modotti’s 1928 “Composition: Corn, Guitar, Cartridge,” which he considers her best photograph. It combines a strong formal arrangement and beautiful textures with content that captures the essence of Mexico as seen through her revolutionary eyes.

The show includes Modotti’s bold, emotional portraits of actress Dolores del Rio and of Orozco’s wife, Maria Marin de Orozco, who was the sister of Rivera’s first wife, Lupe. There are also examples of the photographic work Modotti did to make a living--straightforward pictures that document such things as door carvings and a Rivera mural in progress.

Among Weston’s work is a print of the first tree he photographed. He took the photograph in Joshua Tree in 1928, entered it in a contest and won $100.

“Oceano” illustrates the sharp, rich quality of his later work, his mastery of formal composition, and his ability to convey levels of texture in a natural landscape. “Church Door, Hornitos” (1940) features his application of those talents to an ordinary, human-made structure.

Fahey said very few vintage photographs made by master photographers of the late 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century exist.

“Of the best photographs ever taken, there are only one or two prints,” he said.

This scarcity of vintage prints is especially true in regard to Modotti, who stopped taking pictures in the 1930s when she moved to Europe and concentrated on political work.

“She made so few images, and that’s created a demand for the work,” Fahey said.

He added that with the recent emergence and importance of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54) has come a new interest in looking at other women of that period, such as Modotti.

“Modotti is the photographic female equivalent of Frida Kahlo,” he said. “She was such an important figure associated with Weston in his formative years. He is one of the top photographers that ever lived. People are interested in looking at the early influences.”

Maximum Minimalism: In 1927--the same year that Edward Weston established a studio in San Francisco with his son, Brett--painter Lorser Feitelson (1898-1978) moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Here, he made his mark on Modernism as an artist, teacher, gallery director, curator, public speaker and television host.

Feitelson’s interest in art had begun before he was 10, when he started making regular trips to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to sketch paintings and drawings hanging in the Mannerist and Baroque galleries.

His circa 1919-21 abstract figure paintings and a still life in the show, “Lorser Feitelson: Motion as Line,” at Tobey Moss Gallery reflect his admiration of those periods. But as Josine Ianco-Starrels points out in her exhibit essay, these paintings contain “the promise of ideas that matured and came to fruition half a century later.”

She is referring to Feitelson’s abstract line paintings that he did between 1963 and 1978, the last 14 years of his life. Moss and Ianco-Starrels have brought 15 of these paintings together with the early works. The energy and excitement in paintings separated by 50 years is derived from the same source: the sensuous curves and sweeping directional movement of line.

“I’m always interested in a thread that runs through a lifetime,” Ianco-Starrels said. “In the early pieces, the contours, whether a pear or a person, are kinetic linear; the accent is on the line and the movement of the line. And those at the end are kinetic linear.”

The last works represent the refinement of his early artistic notion into its purest, most simplified form. One or two lines (sometimes as many as three) glide across richly colored canvases, some of them swelling or waning as they go, creating a sense of great expectations.

“These are figures,” Tobey Moss said, pointing to the circa 1920-21 “Bathers,” “and so are the newer paintings. He called them ‘magical space forms.’ They are a bold use of the flat form, with no perspective. In a most minimal way, he has created space that is so full and important.”

Feitelson labeled two of these canvases “four-way” paintings, meaning there is no “This Side Up” to them. His wife, artist Helen Lundeberg, told Moss that Feitelson would work on these paintings in one direction, and then turn them and continue the line from that point of view.

“They are total compositions that invite the viewer to respond,” Moss said. “They have an energy, an excitement, a movement that is thrilling to me.”

At 8 p.m. Oct. 19, Tobey Moss Gallery will present a lecture on Lorser Feitelson and a video showing of a November, 1959, television show, “Feitelson on Art.” The program is just one from a series that ran for four years on NBC.

Roszak Test: The steve turner gallery continues to spotlight American artists of the early 20th Century with its show “Theodore Roszak: Constructivist Works 1931-1944.”

In 1929, Roszak (1907-1981) left Chicago and traveled throughout Europe for two years, where he was exposed to Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism and the Bauhaus. Drawings made after he returned to the United States show figurative elements reduced to simple geometric forms.

Inspired by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s technologically influenced aesthetics, Roszak decided to pick up the tools of industry. After taking courses in toolmaking and industrial design, he set up shop and spent much of the ‘30s and early ‘40s creating fantastic, brightly colored Constructivist sculptures from polished steel, plastic and wood.

Five meticulously made constructions are in this show, including “Lighter Than Air,” a glorious vision of a vibrant yellow Machine Age hot-air balloon.

“Roszak has always been one of my favorite artists,” Turner said. “I think he is one of the most important American artists from this period.”

The constructions are accompanied by drawing studies for his sculpture, and painstaking black ink and colored pencil drawings for fantastic architecture. A series of dramatic photograms--created by placing objects between light-sensitive paper and a light source--depicting machine parts dates from 1937-41, but were not known to exist until after he died in 1981.