László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian-born American painter, sculptor, photographer, designer, theorist, and art teacher, whose vision of a nonrepresentational art consisting of pure visual fundamentals — colour, texture, light, and equilibrium of forms — was immensely influential in both the fine and applied arts in the mid-20th century.
Background
László Moholy-Nagy was born on July 20, 1895, in a small farming town in southern Hungary. His father abandoned the family when he was young, and his mother took László and his brothers to live with their grandmother. "I lived my childhood years in a terrible great quietness," he later wrote. Along with his mother and brothers, he left for Budapest in 1913. He experienced the horror of war on the Russian and Italian fronts, which remained with him for the rest of his life. During this time as a soldier as he sketched field life, his fellow officers, and the civilians he encountered, he discovered a passion for drawing.
Education
Laszlo attended Gymnasium in the city of Szeged. Along with his mother and brothers, László Moholy-Nagy left for Budapest in 1913 to study law at the University of Budapest, but his studies were interrupted when he enlisted into the Austro-Hungarian Army as an artillery officer in 1915.
In Budapest, encouraged by his friend and mentor the art critic Iván Hevesy, László Moholy-Nagy began taking art classes, studying the old masters, especially Rembrandt, as well as the works of the Expressionists and Futurists. His style ranged widely in this early period. He painted landscapes with abstract elements and used bright colors typical of Hungarian folk art to depict technological subjects in a Cubist style. He also developed an interest in photography, encouraged by the photographer Erzsébet Landau.
In 1919, when the Communist Hungarian government, with which he sympathized, was replaced by a military dictatorship, he withdrew to the neighboring city of Szeged, and, after a few months, moved to Vienna. There he joined MA (Hungarian Activism, also referring to the Hungarian word for 'today'), a Hungarian avant-garde group that believed in the revolutionary potential of art. In 1920 he moved to Berlin, then the vibrant hub of Central and Eastern European avant-garde art, where his ideas began to crystallize.
He painted completely abstract works influenced by Dadaism, Suprematism, and Russian Constructivism. He used letters as compositional devices and created photomontages that resembled those of Kurt Schwitters - though his serious and passionate nature did not embrace the sarcasm of Dada. Moholy-Nagy was also intrigued by the paintings of Kazimir Malevich, although he did not accept the Russian's spirituality. El Lissitzky and the Constructivists were his primary influences at this time. He experimented with transparency in color as he overlapped geometric shapes, believing in the Constructivist affirmation of art as a powerful social force that could teach workers to live in harmony with new technology.
Although Moholy-Nagy considered himself primarily a painter throughout much of his career, he also produced a great deal of photography. His first wife, Lucia, whom he met in Berlin in 1920, was a talented photographer and went on to record the Bauhaus years with her camera. They experimented with "photograms" (camera-less photographs in which light-sensitive paper is exposed directly to light), which allowed Moholy-Nagy to explore light and shade, transparency, and form. In 1922, his success as a painter secured him a solo show at Galerie der Sturm, the most popular gallery in Berlin. A year later he received an invitation to teach at the Bauhaus from Walter Gropius.
From 1923 to 1928, Moholy-Nagy taught at the Bauhaus, an influential school of architecture and industrial design that provided students with groundwork in all of the visual arts. His recruitment to the faculty marked a turning point in the school's direction since he was given control of the school's crucial preliminary course, or Vorkurs. Rather than endorsing the individualism of Expressionist painting, he introduced a new emphasis on the unity of art and technology. Moholy-Nagy's gregarious disposition made him a natural teacher. He taught the metal workshop, taking over from Paul Klee, which designed a line of lighting fixtures under his direction that are still in use today.
He also co-edited the periodical Bauhaus with Gropius, who became his mentor and lifelong friend. They co-published the "Bauhausbucher", the fourteen books that acted as the manifesto of the Bauhaus faculty. He designed the typography for the books and wrote two influential ones himself. "Painting, Photography, and Film" was published in 1925. The second book, and the 14th in the series, "From Material to Architecture", was published in 1930 (this was translated as "The New Vision: From Material to Architecture" in 1932) and offers a summary of Moholy-Nagy's Vorkurs.
Political pressure in the late 1920s prompted Moholy-Nagy to resign from the Bauhaus. Next, he explored a variety of creative fields to support his family, no longer identifying himself as a painter. Socialists and Nationalists alike attacked his controversial stage sets for the Krolloper, an experimental opera house in Berlin, for the overt use of machinery that dwarfed the human figure onstage.
Moholy-Nagy expressed himself more fully in the 11 films he made between 1929 and 1936. His first film, "Berlin Still-Life" (1931), followed a documentary style he often employed. However, it was his famous "Light-Play, Black-White-Gray" of 1930 that was distinctly avant-garde. In 1932, he and Lucia separated, and he married his second wife, Sibyl, whom he had met at a film production studio.
Political tension and rise to power of the National Socialists in 1933 led Moholy-Nagy and his wife to emigrate. They moved to Holland temporarily in 1934, then to London in 1935. Moholy-Nagy discovered an international group of artists and intellectuals who had also fled there, finding many opportunities for industrial design. However, he was not satisfied with the situation in London as he truly sought an artist community and a chance to re-create the Bauhaus. A British film agency asked him to record the Olympic Games of 1936, as he described it to capture, “the spectator psychology, the physiognomic contrast between an international crowd and the rabid German nationalists”, but, disgusted at finding that former friends and students in Berlin had become Nazis, he quit after three days, telling the agency, “I’ll never go back to Germany.” In 1937, a door opened for the artist when he was recommended by Gropius to direct a new art school in Chicago.
From 1937 to 1946, Moholy-Nagy dedicated himself to teaching as much as to his own work. He negotiated a five-year contract as director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, but the school went bankrupt after its first year. While the faculty stood by him, Moholy-Nagy faced personal attacks by the Executive Committee, which instilled his distrust of industrialists.
Against all odds, he re-opened the school in 1939 as the School of Design and recruited a board of art supporters who agreed with his educational philosophy, including Walter Gropius, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and philosopher John Dewey. Moholy-Nagy and the faculty supported themselves through other work and taught at the School out of devotion. The start of World War II presented new challenges as the draft depleted the school of both faculty and students. However, Moholy-Nagy's inventiveness kept the school alive, and he found ways for the school to contribute to the war effort through ideas for camouflage and other ventures.
Moholy-Nagy worked tirelessly at a multitude of projects, including teaching and administering the school, dictating a new book, "Vision in Motion" (1947), and working in industrial design to support his family. In 1944, a board formed by industrialists friendly to the educational ideas of the school offered to support its administration and finances to the newly named Institute of Design.
Moholy-Nagy, however, became seriously ill and was diagnosed with leukemia in November 1945. After x-ray treatment, he returned to work as diligently as ever. In November 1946, he attended the Museum of Modern Art's Conference on Industrial Design as a New Profession. This conference was his last stand for his ideas of art education, especially the idea that art should guide industry rather than industrialists dictate design. He died from internal hemorrhaging soon after his return to Chicago.
Special effects for the H.G. Wells - A. Korda film, Things to Come
Am 7 (26)
A II
Composition A XI
Light painting on hinged celluloid (position 1)
Large painting of the railroad
Flower
Photogram
Composition Z VIII
Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light-Space Modulator)
Photogram
K VII
AXL II
Construction AL6
Project for the sculpture Bennett
Landscape with Bridge at Óbuda Hajógyár
Construction
Composition
Pneumatik
Telephone Picture EM 3
Chairs at Margate
Photogram
Light-Space Modulator
Untitled flower
Photogram
The dream of a girls' boarding
Jealousy
Lago Maggiore, Ascona, Switzerland
Paul Hartland Carnival. Composition with two masks .
Leuk 5
Space Modulator L3
The storm
Project for the sculpture Bennett
Yellow Circle
View from the Berlin radio tower in Winter
Photogram
Figurative composition
Photogram
La Canebière Street, Marseilles – View Through the Balcony Grille
Siesta
Leda and the Swan
Z II
Lands
The Law of Series
Oskar Schlemmer in Ascona
Religion
In 1918, he formally converted to the Hungarian Reformed Church; his godfather was his Roman Catholic university friend, the art critic Iván Hevesy.
Views
A modernist and a restless experimentalist from the outset, the Hungarian-born artist was shaped by Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and debates about photography. Moholy-Nagy believed that humanity could only defeat the fracturing experience of modernity - only feel whole again - if it harnessed the potential of new technologies. Artists should transform into designers, and through specialization and experimentation find the means to answer humanity's needs.
Membership
Moholy-Nagy became a member of the Hungarian art group Ma in 1919, and American Abstract Artists in 1941.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
He was certainly a leftist, but not in an absolute political sense. Also later, when he thought it was possible to transform society through modern technology and culture, in fact, he was a rather an utopian than a proponent of political realism. He was more gifted for creation than for destruction.
Interests
Artists
Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzsky, Rembrandt, Erzsébet Landau
Connections
Laszlo's first wife, Lucia, whom he met in Berlin in 1920, was a talented photographer and went on to record the Bauhaus years with her camera. In 1932, he and Lucia separated, and he married his second wife, Sibyl, whom he had met at a film production studio. Their daughter Hattula was born in 1933. His second daughter, Claudia, was born amid his busy work life and just before an opportunity to return to Berlin.