Exhibition Tina Modotti
[…] But I don’t want to talk about myself. I only want to talk about photography and what we can achieve with the camera. I want to photograph what I see, sincerely, directly, without tricks, and I believe this can be my contribution to a better world.” Tina Modotti, 1926
From September 26, 2024, to February 16, 2025, the rooms of Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna will host a major exhibition dedicated to the photography of Tina Modotti (Udine, 1896 – Mexico City, 1942), a prominent figure in photography and political activism of the first half of the twentieth century. Organized and curated by Chiara Campagnoli, Deborah Petroni, and Rubens Fogacci of Pallavicini s.r.l., in collaboration with the Tina Modotti Committee and under the artistic direction of Francesca Bogliolo, the exhibition aims to retrace, through a refined selection of approximately 120 works and some precious documents, the story of a courageous and unconventional woman who interpreted the sentiment of her time, developing a poetics of truth imbued with human values capable of transcending the limits of space and time.
-
Useful Information:
Exhibition Opening Hours
- Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
Special Openings
- October 4, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
- November 1 and 2, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
- December 8, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
- December 31, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM (last entry at 4:00 PM)
- January 1, 2025, from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
- January 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
- February 8, 2025, from 10:00 AM to midnight (last entry at 11:00 PM)
- February 18, 19, 25, 26, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (last entry at 7:00 PM)
Scheduled Full-Day Closures
- December 24 and 25, 2025
Tickets:
- Full Price: €16
- Reduced: €14 (for ages 6 to 18, seniors over 65 with ID, students up to 26 with ID, military personnel with ID, tour guides with ID, practicing and publicist journalists with valid press ID, companions of disabled persons, ICOM members with ID, AICS Bologna members with ID)
- Card Cultura, Bologna Congress Card, Bologna Welcome Card: €12
- University Thursday (with a valid student ID from any faculty): €12
- Free: Children under 6 years old, disabled persons with Disability Card released from INPS
- *Groups (minimum 10 people): €12 (1 free guide per group)
- *Schools (from kindergarten to high school): €5 (2 free chaperones per class and 104 free tickets)
*For groups and schools, advance reservation is required by emailing: info@palazzopallavicini.com
- Open Ticket: €18 - Skip-the-line ticket valid any opening day, including weekends and holidays
- For all tickets purchased online or at other ticket offices, an additional €1.5 booking fee applies
Important Notices: Access for non-ambulant or wheelchair users (non-electric) is only available via a Jolly Ramp D3000010 stairlift provided by TGR, with a weight capacity of up to 140 kg (calculated between person and wheelchair, total weight to be managed by the visitor) for two flights of stairs totaling 38 steps. The complete technical specification is available for download and review at: https://tgr.it/prodotto/jolly-ramp-montascale-mobile-a-cingoli/ Exhibition and Event Contacts - Palazzo Pallavicini
- Email: info@palazzopallavicini.com
- Phone: +39 3313471504
Press Office and Social Media - Digital Suits
- Email: press@digitalsuits.it - info@digitalsuits.it
- Phone: +39 3348689589
-
Press Release:
Independent, free, modern, Tina Modotti combined her love for art and truth with her political fervor, which guided her choices and actions as an activist, with the will to contribute to the creation of a better world. In continuous dialogue with artists and intellectuals throughout the evolution of her expressive periods, Modotti developed a photographic language with an intimate tone, capable of exploring the contradictions of reality to penetrate its secret lyricism. The entirety of the displayed shots reveals, from the very beginning, a new way of observing reality, participatory of the fleetingness of its moments: the articulated path through the rooms aims to invite the observer to a dialogue with their personal conception of time, sometimes still and astonished, sometimes fleeting and elusive. What emerges strongly is a happy and free Tina (happy because she is free), as she herself writes to Weston in April 1925: a woman with a lively intellect and a surprising capacity for introspection, whose multifaceted nature appears capable of guiding her choices. Organized into six sections, the exhibition aims to show the public the infinite facets of a photographer skilled in setting aside aesthetics to focus on ethics, developing a visually eloquent and personal code, which evolved in a very short time, yet left an indelible mark on the historical and photographic heritage of the early 20th century. The continuous dialogue with the photographs of Edward Weston, a reflection of a dense correspondence between the two artists, narrates Tina's obsession with photographic quality and her repeated will, in a 1929 statement, to objectively record life in all its aspects. Numerous are the biographical photographs, rich in narrative power, among which appear the faces of some well-known personalities of the era and the artistic sphere in which Modotti immersed her soul and found her inspiration: the photographer and her mentor Edward Weston, the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the actress Dolores del Rio, the revolutionary journalist Julio Antonio Mella, the politician Vittorio Vidali. In the spirit of passionate and sincere activism, Tina used the photographic medium as an extension of her own eye, a tool for investigation and social denunciation, with an expressive coherence capable of transcending art to offer it as a gift to life, a life that, according to her own words, continually fought to prevail over art. A true metamorphosis of life into art, which finds its photographic transposition in the famous streets and delicate geometries on display, which Tina attempts to convert into abstraction to preserve them in memory, leaving aside superfluous elements to fervently reach the core of feeling. The intensity of the passion guiding Tina's hand and eye is found among the faces and hands of the Mexican people, protagonists of an entire section, witnesses of a will for change and a necessary awareness, which in her vision rise to icons of the possibility of social redemption. Life, art, and revolution: these are the key words of the shots that capture the symbols of class struggle, workers, women of the people, gatherings, and details. The intense snapshots of the women of Tehuantepec who, walking quickly by nature, narrate Tina's will to search for a new truth and poetic sense in an ancient society that becomes for her an inexhaustible source of creative inspiration; stern, in this sense, are the gazes of the children, who seem to penetrate the lens in an attempt to reach the soul of the photographer. To close the exhibition, finally, a selection of portraits of Tina, including some of those she defined as immortal, made by Edward Weston. In observing them, one seems to hear the echo of Federico Marin's words, who described her as “a mysterious beauty, devoid of vulgarity, but not cheerful, rather austere, terribly austere. Not melancholic, nor tragic.” Charm and mystery remain intact, as the words written in letters, her peculiar gaze, the daring experimentation, place Tina Modotti among the greatest interpreters of the reality of the human condition, captured in its infinite facets. The immersive nature of her shots, resulting from an innate empathy towards the subjects, becomes a voice capable of narrating to the viewer the infinite variety of the world and, simultaneously, its universality. Texts, insights by: Francesca Bogliolo Archive and Photographs owned by: Maria Domini, Tina Modotti Committee Organized by: Pallavicini Srl by Chiara Campagnoli, Deborah Petroni, and Rubens Fogacci Catalog for sale exclusively at Palazzo Pallavicini is produced by: Forum Società Editrice Universitaria Udinese