Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1895 Bácsborsód, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)

Died: 1946 Chicago, Illinois, USA

Year of Migration to the UK: 1935

Biography

Photographer and graphic designer László Moholy-Nagy was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Bácsborsód, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) on 20 July 1895. He studied law at Budapest University before enlisting in 1915 in the Austro-Hungarian army as an artillery officer, documenting his wartime experiences in crayon sketches and watercolours. Once discharged in 1918, he enrolled at the private art school of the Hungarian Fauve artist Róbert Berény. Following the defeat of the Communist regime in August of that year, he moved to Szeged, where in 1919 he held his first exhibition. In November 1919 he left for Vienna, then moved to Berlin in 1920, where he met his future wife, photographer and writer Lucia Schulz (afterwards Lucia Moholy), whom he married the same year (divorced 1934) and they collaborated on projects including the 1925 book Malerei, Photografie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film). In 1922, Moholy-Nagy held the first of two joint exhibitions with fellow Hungarian Peter Laszlo Péri at Der Sturm Galerie in Berlin and met German architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, who subsequently invited him to teach at the Bauhaus school of art in Weimar and Dessau (1923–28), where he co-pioneered the Bauhaus Books series with Gropius, and collaborated with designer Herbert Bayer on typography for Bauhaus materials. Throughout his career, Moholy-Nagy became both proficient and innovative in the fields of photography, typography, sculpture, painting, printmaking, film-making, and industrial design, highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate for the integration of technology within the arts.

In 1934, as a consequence of the Nazi regime, Moholy-Nagy left Germany, moving to Amsterdam, then, in 1935, followed Gropius to Britain, where he spent two years before moving on to the United States. In Britain, he was best-known as a photographer (following previous publication of his photographs in The Architectural Review) and his English period represented the highpoint in this sphere of his artistic activity. He also worked as a graphic designer on books, advertisements and London Transport posters, as an art advisor for Simpsons' menswear store and designed publicity for the Isokon Furniture Company. In addition, he made two documentary films, Lobsters (1935), and New Architecture, London Zoo (1936), and worked as a designer on Things to Come for Hungarian émigré film-producer Alexander Korda. Following an introduction by the English poet John Betjeman to the publisher John Miles, Moholy-Nagy illustrated three books, The Street Markets of London, Eton Portrait and An Oxford University Chest, in addition to working with Gropius (and creating the menu design for Gropius' farewell dinner) and with the English modernist architect, writer and painter Edwin Maxwell Fry on exhibition designs, as well as lecturing and contributing to the Constructivist review Circle (1937). In 1936 work by Moholy-Nagy was included in an exhibition of Contemporary Art at Leicester Museum, alongside works by Hepworth, Moore, Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Dali, Paul Klee, curated by the progressive Art Assistant Arthur C. Sewter, and this was followed in January 1937 by a solo exhibition of his work at The London Gallery. In the same year, his work was exhibited as part of the abstract section of the Art International Association show. His work was also included in his absence in the notorious Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) show mounted by the Nazi regime in Munich in 1937.

In 1937, upon Gropius' recommendation, Moholy-Nagy's short but productive time in Britain came to an end when he moved to Chicago to become the director of the short-lived New Bauhaus, which closed in 1938, then, in 1939, with the assistance of Container Corporation president Walter Paepcke, he founded his own School of Design (later the Institute of Design, and from 1949 onwards, part of Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago. He became a naturalised American citizen in April 1946 and continued to practice as an artist and teacher until his death from leukemia in Chicago, Illinois, on 24 November 1946.

Related books

Valeria Carullo, Moholy-Nagy in Britain, 1935–1937 (London: Lund Humphries, 2019)
Petra Eisele, Isabel Naegele and Michael Lailach (eds.), Moholy-Nagy and the New Typography A-Z (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2019)
Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
Matthew S. Witkovsky, Carol S. Eliel and Karole P. B. Vail (eds.), Moholy-Nagy: Future Present (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2016)
Péter Baki (ed.), Eyewitness. Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century: Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Munkácsi (London: The Royal Academy of Arts, 2011)
Renate Heyne, Hattula Moholy-Nagy and Floris Neusüss (eds.), László Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms: Catalogue Raisonné (Berlin and Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2009)
Achim Borchardt-Hume (ed.), Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (London: Tate Publishing, 2006)
Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945)', Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945), (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006), pp. 249-298
Jeannine Fiedler, László Moholy-Nagy (London: Phaidon, 2001)
Louis Kaplan, László Moholy-Nagy: Biographical Writings (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995)
Julie Saul (ed.), Moholy-Nagy: Fotoplastiks: the Bauhaus Years (New York: The Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1983)
L. Moholy-Nagy (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1980)
Richard Kostelanetz, Moholy-Nagy (London: Allen Lane, 1971)
John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938) (photographs by L. Moholy-Nagy)
Bernard Fergusson, Eton Portrait (London: John Miles, 1937) (photographs by L. Moholy-Nagy)
Mary Bendetta, Street Markets of London (London: John Miles, 1936) (photographs by L. Moholy-Nagy)

Public collections

Related organisations

Bauhaus (teacher)
Isokon Furniture Company (publicity designer)
London Transport (designer)
New Bauhaus (director)
Institute of Design (founder)

Selected exhibitions

Bauhaus in Britain, Tate, London (2019)
László Moholy-Nagy, Hauser & Wirth, London (2019)
László Moholy-Nagy in Britain: Between the New Vision and the New Bauhaus, RIBA, London (2019)
Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, LACMA, Los Angeles (2017)
The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come, Santa-Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara (2015)
Rediscovered Photography of László Moholy-Nagy: Photographs, Photograms, Photoplastics, and Films, Malmö, Sweden (2011)
Eyewitness. Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century: Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Munkácsi, The Royal Academy of Arts (2011)
Moholy-Nagy in Motion, The Museum of Modern Art Kamakura & Hayama, Kamakura, Japan (2011)
László Moholy-Nagy and Scott Myles, Ancient and Modern Gallery, London (2007)
Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World, Tate (2006)
László Moholy-Nagy: A Life in Motion, Annely Juda Fine Art, London (2004)
Moholy-Nagy: Fotoplastiks: the Bauhaus Years, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1983)
L. Moholy-Nagy, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery and Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (1980)
Moholy-Nagy: Photographs, Photograms and Photoplastics, Nigel Greenwood Gallery, London (1973)
László Moholy-Nagy, Marlborough Gallery, London (1968)
Moholy-Nagy: Paintings and Collages 1914–1946, The New London Gallery (1961)
L. Moholy-Nagy, London Gallery (1937)
Artists International Association, London (1937)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [László Moholy-Nagy]