Under the Mexican Sky:
vintage photographs by Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and colleagues

Westons © CCP, Arizona Board of Regents 
Cunninghams © Imogen Cunningham Trust

Mexico City in the 1920s-30s was the scene of one of the great artistic flowerings of the twentieth century. Like Paris, it served as a magnet for international artists and photographers. Foremost among the expatriate photographers was the Los Angelino, Edward Weston, who embedded himself in the artistic milieu surrounding the muralists Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros. Weston reinvented himself as an artist during his three years in Mexico, 1923-26. The painterly, Pictorialist blur that characterized his studio portraiture in the ‘teens melted away under the brilliant Mexican sun, to be replaced by crystalline landscapes as well as evocative still lifes that prefigured his later shells and peppers. Meanwhile his paramour and protégée, the Italian silent film star Tina Modotti, created photographs that would place her in the pantheon of great photographers of the era.  Drawn from a single private collection, this exhibition features rare vintage Mexican masterworks by both Weston and Modotti from the 1920s, as well as stellar photographs from the 1930s by the Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson and by Mexico’s own Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
​Number of photographs: 48
Rental fee: $10,500 for 8 weeks

​An expanded version of this exhibition that includes an additional 20 Paul Strand photogravures created for a 1940 portfolio Photographs of Mexico. 
Number of photographs: 68
Rental fee: $12,500 for 8 weeks