Event on 11/11 – US and Mexican Modernists in the 1920s-1930s

“Mexico City of the 1920s and ‘30s was a vibrant cosmopolitan artistic center, drawing modernists from all over the world, including photographers from the United States. In turn, Mexican painters traveled to the United States for commissions and exhibition opportunities, giving rise to further hemispheric interchange. This presentation focuses on the creative practices of a tight circle of friends—Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo—and specifically on the bodies of work each artist made in the other’s country. I argue that artistic dialog between nations is one way of crossing borders, and that the rich legacy of inter-American modernist exchange still resonates one-hundred-years later.”

Monica Bravo is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Photographic Media in the History of Art and Visual Culture program at California College of the Arts. She specializes in the history of photography and modernism in the Americas.