Tina Modotti and Concha Michel - The Roses


»The Roses«

 

About ten years ago a photo from 1928 by Italian actress and photographer Tina Modotti (1896-1942) showing the Mexican musician Concha Michel (1899-1990) arrested the attention of Winter & Winter and became the inspiration to search and rediscover the music of that revolutionary singer. Unexpectedly, it was impossible for many years to find any information about Concha Michel; it even seemed as if her works and music had never existed. In the first half of the last century the singer Concha Michel was a committed activist for female rights, also fighting uncompromisingly against the exploitation of the working class. In 1953 she was on Frida Kahlo's side at her final exhibition in Mexico, the famous painter – ill and unable to walk – being carried in a bed. It lasted until 2004 when Miguel Sáenz (the Spanish translator of Thomas Bernhard, Günter Grass and Elfriede Jelinek) was able to get in contact with relatives of Concha Michel in Mexico, who finally sent a collection of scores to Winter & Winter. Concha Michel and Tina Modotti were close friends, both women posed for Diego Rivera, and Concha Michel performed her songs during the opening of a show at the Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico where Modotti presented a selection of her photographic works in December 1929. In 1932, Concha Michel and Tina Modotti met again in Moscow, where Concha Michel investigated about female rights. Tina Modotti died in 1942. The exhibition "The Roses", title after a photo by Tina Modotti, is dedicated to the memory of these two extraordinary women.

 

 

 


© Winter&Winter | Impressum | Datenschutz | Press Login | Back