BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

Though best remembered as Edward Weston’s model, Tina Modotti was a fine 20th century photographer and activist who fought on behalf of Mexican peasants in the 1930s. She was a woman who "chose to identify herself with the arts, with the poor, and with the solidarity of the revolution." By Alexandra Jopp In Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life , Mildred Constantine describes Modotti as: “Tina Modotti was many things: a gifted photographer, passionate companion of artists and revolutionaries. Fighter for the cause of humanity, "Maria" (her nom de gnerre) who succored the children and wounded in Spain, the tempestuous beauty of unabashed sensuality. Who was she? Dead, she is a legend poeticized and victimized by conjecture, anecdotes and, where fact is lacking, imaginative embellishments.” Looking for clues in Modotti’s early life, that might have led to her artistic development, the art critics cite her youthful identification with the class struggle. Following h...

   Hudson River School painter famous for landscapes of the American West By Alexandra Jopp An Arizona Sunset Near the Grand Canyon (1898). Thomas Moran was one of the best-known and most influential painters of the Hudson River School working in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. His iconic watercolors and oil paintings of the American West not only made him one of the country’s preeminent landscape artists, but also helped to convince members of Congress to establish the United States’ first national park at Yellowstone in 1872. While he was best known for these works, his subjects also included literary, marine, European and Mexican themes, among others. Thomas Moran Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, 1859. Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872. Golden Gate Thomas Moran No date. Glorious Venice, 1888 Private collection. Moran was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England, on February 12, 18...