LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY
Berlin in Winter Seen From the Radio Tower, 1928
© Hattula Moholy-Nagy / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018 / Courtesy Kicken Berlin
Biography
Trained as a lawyer, László Moholy-Nagy (American, born Hungary, 1895–1946) moved to Berlin in 1919 to pursue his creative interests. He experimented with photography, painting, collage, and drawing and worked with his wife Lucia Moholy on publications in art theory and manifestos such as Malerei, Photographie, Film (1925). By mid-decade of the 1920s he was a central figure in the circle of European avant-garde artists. He delved into Dada collage and appropriated Constructivist ideas. He published in De Stijl and participated in the 1922 First International Congress of Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf with El Lissitzky, Raoul Hausmann, Theo van Doesburg, and Tristan Tzara and in the Dada-Constructivist Congress in Weimar, where he met Walter Gropius. He experimented with the photogram’s light drawing technique. In 1923 he was appointed to the Bauhaus Weimar and became Head of the Metal Workshop. He also took over Johannes Itten's role co-teaching the Bauhaus preliminary course with Josef Albers. Already before the photography class had been established in 1929 he inspired countless students to experiment with the medium. From 1928 on he worked in Berlin as a designer and emigrated to London in 1934. In 1937 he was one of the co-founders of the “New Bauhaus” in Chicago and until his death headed the School of Design that emerged from it.
