Hands Washing, ca. 1927
Woman with a Flag, 1928
Mella’s TypewriterorLa Te ́chnica, 1928
Hands of the Puppeteer, 1929
Woman from Tehuantepec, 1929
Further Reading
Albers, Patricia.Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina
Modotti. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1999.
———.Tina Modotti: The Mexican Renaissance.Paris:
Jean-Michel Place, 2000. Includes an essay by Karen
Cordero Reiman, ‘‘Cloaks of Innocence and Ideology:
Constructing a Modern Mexican Art, 1920–1929.’’
Barckhausen, Christiane.Auf den Spuren von Tina Modotti
[Following the traces of Tina Modotti].Ko ̈ln: Paul-
Rugenstein, 1988; asVerdad y leyendda de Tina Modotti,
La Habana, Cuba: Casa de las Ame ́ricas, 1989.
Constantine, Mildred.Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life. New
York: Paddington Press, 1975. Second edition, New
York: Rizzoli, 1983.
D’Attilio, Robert. ‘‘Glittering Traces of Tina Modotti.’’
Views(Boston) 6, no. 4 (Summer 1985).
Lowe, Sarah M.Tina Modotti Photographs. New York:
Harry N. Abrams, 1995.
Modotti, Tina. ‘‘Sobre Fotografı ́a/On Photography.’’Mex-
ican Folkways12 (October/December 1929).
Wollen, Peter, and Laura Mulvey.Frida Kahlo and Tina
Modotti.London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1982.
Stark [Rule], Amy. ‘‘The Letters from Tina Modotti to
Edward Weston.’’The Archive[Tucson, AZ] no. 22
(January 1986).LA
́
SZLO
́
MOHOLY-NAGY
Hungarian-American
La ́szlo ́ Moholy-Nagy’s reputation as one of the
most influential figures in twentieth-century photo-
graphy has withstood the vagaries of fashion and the
advance of thought about the medium of the post-
war era, a dialogue that his ideas were instrumental
in nourishing. A painter, sculptor, designer, film
maker, theorist, and teacher, as well as a pioneering
experimental photographer, Moholy-Nagy seemed
the embodiment of a twentieth-century Renaissance
man, equally at home in the classroom, studio,
experimental laboratory, and the realm of ideas.
La ́szlo ́ Moholy-Nagy was born in 1895 into a
farming family in the village of Ba ́csborsod in an
agricultural area of southern Hungary, where he
grew up and attended elementary school. For his
secondary education, he attended the gymnasium in
Szeged, where he studied law. In Szeged, he first
came into contact with the intellectual elite that was
to shape modern Europe. Poet Gyula Juha ́sz was a
mentor, as Moholy-Nagy also nurtured ambitions
to be a writer. Drafted into service in 1914 during
World War I, he served on the Russian front in the
artillery. Wounded and hospitalized twice during
the war, Moholy spent his recovery drawing, a
childhood interest. Upon his discharge after suffer-
ing a hand wound, he returned to the study of law
after the war in Budapest, but around the time of
the bloodless bourgeois revolution in 1918 and the
subsequent rise of Communism with the proletarian
takeover, Moholy-Nagy abandoned further study
to return to Szeged and take up the life of an artist.
Although active in the intelligentsia, Moholy was
not essentially political; he moved first to Vienna,
then to Berlin in 1920, where he met the Czech-born
Lucia Schultz, his future wife and collaborator.
Moholy-Nagy became a member of the organiza-
tion of vanguard Marxist Hungarian artists then
actively shaping the new regime; they issued a man-
ifesto in 1922 titled ‘‘Constructivism and the Prole-
tariat,’’ published in their periodicalMA (Today).
Early artistic efforts included coediting and design-
ing theBuch neuer Ku ̈nstler (Book of New Artists)
with Lajos Kassa ́k, a leader of the Hungarian artis-
tic and political avant-garde.
A turning point in his life, however, came in 1923
when the architect Walter Gropius, who had been
impressed by an exhibition he had seen, invited
Moholy-Nagy to teach at the Bauhaus, founded in
Weimer four years earlier. Asked to teach the foun-
dation course, replacing the painter Johann Itten,
Moholy remained at the school for five years, first
in Weimar and then when the school moved to Des-
sau. The Bauhaus was a radical new idea in peda-
gogy. Unlike traditional arts training, which was
based on mastering accepted forms, often through
copying masterworks, the Bauhaus had a hands-on
approach combined with the philosophy that art was
integral to the fabric of daily life; it aimed to train theMODOTTI, TINA