Moholy-Nagy, László (lä`slō mô`hôlē-nŏ`dyə), 1895–1946, Hungarian painter, designer, and experimental photographer. He turned to art after studying law. While living in Berlin he was one of the founders of constructivism constructivism, Russian art movement founded c.1913 by Vladimir Tatlin , related to the movement known as suprematism . After 1916 the brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner gave new impetus to Tatlin's art of purely abstract (although politically intended)
..... Click the link for more information. , experimenting with photograms and translucent materials. As a professor in the newly opened Bauhaus Bauhaus (bou`hous), school of art and architecture in Germany.
..... Click the link for more information. from 1923 to 1928, Moholy-Nagy was coeditor with Walter Gropius of the school's regular publications. While there he experimented with a form of kinetic art kinetic art, term referring to sculptured works that include motion as a significant dimension. The form was pioneered by Marcel Duchamp , Naum Gabo , and Alexander Calder . Kinetic art is either nonmechanical, e.g., Calder's mobiles , or mechanical, e.g.
..... Click the link for more information. , which he called "light space modulators," a stunning array of motor-driven shapes that he illuminated to produce elaborate shadows on the nearby walls. He worked in Berlin until 1934 as a typographer and designer of stage sets. In 1937 he directed the Bauhaus School of Design in Chicago until it failed (1938). Thereafter he opened the Chicago Institute of Design, which he headed until his death. His greatest contribution to modern art lay in his teaching, which deeply influenced American commercial and industrial design. He was the author of The New Vision (tr. 1928) and Vision in Motion (1947).

Bibliography

See study by his wife S. Moholy-Nagy (1950).

Moholy-Nagy, László

(born July 20, 1895, Bacsbarsod, Hung.—died Nov. 24, 1946, Chicago, Ill., U.S.) Hungarian painter, photographer, and art teacher. After studying law in Budapest, he went to Berlin in 1919, and in 1923 he took charge of the metal workshop of the Bauhaus as well as the Bauhausbook series of publications. As a painter and photographer he worked predominantly with light. His “photograms” were composed directly on film, and his “light modulators” (oil paintings on transparent or polished surfaces) included mobile light effects. As an educator, he developed a widely accepted curriculum to develop students' natural visual gifts instead of specialized skills. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, he went to London and then to Chicago, where he organized and headed the New Bauhaus.

Moholy-Nagy, László (1895–1946) painter, photographer, sculptor, teacher; born in Bacsbarsod, Hungary. He started painting in Europe (1917), and beginning in 1923, he taught at the Bauhaus School, Germany. Among other projects, he produced abstract photograms, and mobile sculptures, such as Light-Space Requisite (1922–30). He emigrated to America, and from 1937 until his death, was the director of the Bauhaus School of Design in Chicago (later called the Chicago Institute of Design) (1939). The author of Vision in Motion (1947), he influenced many commercial and design artists.