László Moholy-Nagy: Art from the Epoch of the Modernist Experiment

László Moholy-Nagy (July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Jewish Hungarian poet, painter and photographer before he became the major proselytiser of the new avant-garde vision at the Bauhaus school, where has taught as a professor and succeeded is working across disciplines.

 

Influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts, the art critic Peter Schjeldahl called him “relentlessly experimental” on account of his pioneering abstract and figurative work in painting, drawing, photography, collage, sculpture, film, theatre and writing.

He collaborated with other artists, including his first wife Lucia Moholy, who introduced him to making photograms on light-sensitised paper, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer and Herbert Bayer. His most notable accomplishment was the School of Design in Chicago, which survives today as part of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Buy László Moholy-Nagy artwork in the shop.

 

After the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933 and their antisemitic influence spread, László Moholy-Nagy was no longer allowed to work freely and moved with his family to London in 1935. In England, he formed part of the circle of émigré artists and intellectuals who based themselves in Hampstead. Moholy-Nagy lived in the Isokon building in Belsize Park (the first modernist block of flats in Britain and pioneered the idea of minimalist, stylish city living) with Walter Gropius for eight months and then settled in Golders Green.

Moholy-Nagy found some work as a commercial design jobs, including work for Imperial Airways and a shop display for men’s underwear. He photographed contemporary architecture for the Architectural Review where assistant editor John Betjeman commissioned Moholy-Nagy to make documentary photographs to illustrate his book An Oxford University Chest. He was commissioned to make the films Lobsters (1935) and New Architecture and the London Zoo (1936).

 

In 1936, he was commissioned by fellow Hungarian film producer Alexander Korda to design special effects for the now-classic film Things to Come, based on the novel by H. G. Wells. Working at Denham Studios, Moholy-Nagy created kinetic sculptures and abstract light effects, but they were mostly unused by the film’s director.

In 1937 his artworks were included in the infamous “Degenerate art” exhibition held by Nazi Germany in Munich.

 

In 1937, on the recommendation of Walter Gropius, and at the invitation of Walter Paepcke, the Chairman of the Container Corporation of America, Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus.The philosophy of the school was basically unchanged from that of the original, and its headquarters was the Prairie Avenue mansion that architect Richard Morris Hunt had designed for department store magnate Marshall Field.

However, the school lost the financial backing of its supporters after one year, closing in 1938. Moholy-Nagy resumed doing commercial design work, which he continued to do for the rest of his life. Paepcke continued to support the artist, and in 1939 Moholy-Nagy opened the School of Design in Chicago. He also started making static and mobile sculptures in transparent plastic, often accented with chromed metal.

 

In 1944, the School of Design in Chicago became the Institute of Design, and in 1949 it would become a part of Illinois Institute of Technology. He became a naturalised American citizen in April 1946 and in Chicago on November 24, 1946.

Buy László Moholy-Nagy artwork in the shop.