“Gee, Joan, if only you were French and male and dead.” —New York art dealer to Joan Mitchell, the 1950s

She was a steel heiress from the Midwest—Chicago and Lake Forest (her grandfather built Chicago’s bridges and worked for Andrew Carnegie). She was a daughter of the American Revolution—Anglo-Saxon, Republican, Episcopalian.

She was tough, disciplined, courageous, dazzling, and went up against the masculine art world at its most entrenched, made her way in it, and disproved their...

Born in 1896, Tina Modotti lived one of the most brilliant lives of her era. A first-generation modernist photographer, she created internationally renowned images of extra-ordinary formal clarity and profound soulfulness. But Modotti's artistic achievement is only one facet of her astonishing story. A legendary beauty, spirited and sensuous, she scripted for herself a series of remarkable roles--glamorous actress; jazz age bohemian; Communist agent; and lover, colleague, and muse to photographer...