Stadium Exterior

Tina Modotti, who traveled throughout Mexico with photographer, Edward Weston, learned photography from him and started pursuing it seriously. Even after Weston left Mexico in 1926, she remained there and took pictures of the customs, art and buildings of Mexico. A lot of her works were published in art magazines and art critique magazines. In 1927, she joined the Communist Party of Mexico and was deeply involved in political activities. In 1930, she was arrested and expelled from Mexico, having been accused of conspiracy in the failed assassination plot of the Mexican president, Pascual Ortiz Rubio. Even after that, she was actively involved in revolutionary movements in Berlin, Moscow, Paris and Madrid, and gradually ceased her photography work.
"Stadium Exterior" is one of the pictures Modotti took in response to Mexican writer Anita Brenner's request for her to leave behind a record of Mexican art, architecture and craft. In this work showing a exterior of the stadium, Weston's influence can be seen in Modotti's attempt to find the natural forrn of things, as seen in the rectangular timber placed as a ladder, and the structural beauty created by their shadows. Modotti later found her own subjects in the urban space of Mexico itself. though, and established her own original expression.
(Source: Selected Works from the Collection of Nagoya City Art Museum, 1998, P. 65.)