Museo Nacional de Arte

Exhibitions

Frida Kahlo - Tina Modotti

01 de Jun 1983 - 31 de Aug 1983

The exhibition Frida Kahlo – Tina Modotti came to Mexico in order to be presented in the Museo Nacional de Arte, after the Whitechapel Art Gallery of London opened an exhibition in 1982 that showed pictorial and photographic artworks from these artists. The exhibition stay in important museums and European galleries and its presence in the Grey Art Gallery of New York’s University made possible that the exhibition arrived in Mexico from June to August of 1983, enriched with other artworks. 

The two sets of artworks were clearly different; on one side, the paintings of Kahlo and, on the other, the photography of Modotti. What these artworks have in common is that they were painted by women in coinciding times: the 1920s and 1930s. Both related to the so-called “Mexican Renaissance”, a movement in which the political militancy and the artistic production were clearly conjugated. For Frida, painting was a way of introspection and spiritual relief. In the case of Tina Modotti, the situation was clear, for her, it was all about using the camera as a tool, as the most eloquent and direct way of setting or registering the present time