Lazlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)

Author(s): Robert Jay Wolff

Source: College Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1947), pp. 36-37
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/773545
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 obituaries
LAZLO MOHOLY-NAGY
(1895-1946)
In 1937 Lazlo Moholy-Nagy was in-
vited to come to this country to set up
a design institute in Chicago along the
lines of the original German Bauhaus
in which he was an active collaborator
with Walter Gropius, its founder. Mo-
holy's work, in his native Hungary, in
Germany and later in England, had
established him in the forefront of that
small community of innovators which
was to revolutionize the concept of de-
sign and the visual attitude of people
all over the world. Moholy's ten years
in Chicago constituted a kind of final
pronouncement which summarized and
crystallized the concept that design can
be an instrument of knowledge of our-
selves and our times and the means
to a satisfying and productive relation-
ship between the individual and his
complex environment.
In 1923 Moholy joined Walter Gro-
pius and his colleagues at the Bauhaus
at Weimar in that great effort to find
the common denominator which was
present in widely scattered fields of ex-
perimentation: painting, sculpture, in-
dustrial and stage design, typography,
photography, the motion picture and
architecture. The Bauhaus became the
focal point where, perhaps for the first
time, the kinship of contemporary tend-
encies was made the basis of social
action. Its program had its origins in
the concepts of such 19th century think-
ers as Geddes, Ruskin and Morris. The
first principle which guided Gropius and
his group was to coordinate the crea-
tive and intuitive power of the tra-
ditional free artist with the new demands
of industrial production and the disci-
pline of machine techniques. The second
tenet of this approach demanded that
the many special arts come out of isola-
tion and seek a unity of expression, with
36
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contemporary architecture as the guid-
ing factor and the new discoveries in
painting and sculpture as the inspira-
tional core.
Moholy-Nagy, because of his great
vitality and his absorbing interest in all
fields of visual expression, was peculi-
arly fitted to identify himself with this
work. Whatever judgment will be made
upon his own creative work in paint-
ing, photography and film, stage design,
industrial design and sculpture, Moholy
above all else personified the expression
in a single individual of this aspira-
tion to bring isolated concepts and spe-
cialized skills into a richer and more
unified relationship.
By 1937 when he came to this coun-
try, Moholy had demonstrated the ability
of one individual to approach this ideal.
His work as an artist was already well
known and his authority established.
However, from the very beginning he
insisted upon complementing his intui-
tive knowledge, expressed so well in
painting and photography, with verbal
formulation and intellectual clarity. His
earliest writing appeared in the activist
paper Ma, which he and a group of
other young Hungarians published in
Budapest after the first world war. Mo-
holy's group in Hungary, together with
the writings of Le Corbusier and Ozen-
fant in France, the efforts of Mondrian
and the de Stijl group in Holland and the
Russian constructivists, clarified the sepa-
ration between Expressionism which
sought, on the one hand, to express the
revolt of the human spirit against the
destructive forces of mechanization and
those others, of which Moholy was one,
who saw in the new visual and technical
instruments a basis for a renewal of hope
and a means to a richer life.
Moholy served as an officer in the
Hungarian army through World War I
and carried the scar of a severe wound
 OBITUARIES
on his right hand. Though trained as
a lawyer, he settled down after demobili-
zation to painting and sculpture. His
work was exhibited in Berlin and it was
there that Walter Gropius discovered
him and appointed him to the staff of the
Bauhaus. From 1923 to 1928 he played
an important role in formulating the
beginners' course and the program of the
metal workshop. He was co-editor with
Gropius of the Bauhaus publications,
and later, in 1929 published his lectures
in a book which is known to the Eng-
lish reading public as The New Vi-
sion. Sigfried Giedion says of this book:
"The close concatenation between the
artistic evolution of our age and the
mysterious forces of the Zeitgeist which
permeate our daily lives has rarely been
so impressively demonstrated."
The rising forces of reaction in the
Germany of the nineteen twenties made
progress more and more difficult. Mo-
holy left the Bauhaus in 1928 when
Gropius resigned, and set up practice as
an independent designer in Berlin and
later in London. During this period he
produced a series of unusual stage sets
of which the design for the opera Mad-
ame Butterfly is perhaps the best
known. He continued to make important
innovations in photography through his
work on cameraless light recordings
which he named photograms. He pro-
duced at this time one of the first ab-
stract films, while his work in typogra-
phy and advertising design placed him
in the forefront of the innovators in these
fields. With it all he managed to find
time to paint which was the work he
loved best.
In 1937 the Chicago Association of
Arts and Industry, which was a publicly
subscribed organization, invited Moholy
to Chicago to set up a school of design.
It was called the New Bauhaus and after
the first year Moholy and his collabora-
tors reorganized it into an independent
institution and renamed it The School
of Design in Chicago. This was a period
of struggle and enthusiasm backed
largely by Moholy's privafe funds and
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37
by the willingness of the teachers to
work without recompense. This change
also marked the beginning of a new
orientation to the American community.
Moholy demonstrated the pragmatic
basis of his own thinking by a creative
adaptability which welcomed the chal-
lenge of reality and environment. The
school ceased being a second Bauhaus
and put out its own roots. Now known
as the Institute of Design it stands as
a monument to Moholy's enormous en-
ergy and faith and to his great intel-
lectual and creative capacities.
Moholy's credo is fully set down in
his new book Vision in Motion which
appeared in print just a few months
after his death on November 24, 1946.
One evening, a week before he died,
it was said to him that his paintings
above all reflected his revolt against
negative acceptances and against resigna-
tion to frustration and disbelief. He was
told that his paintings, in expressing
his basic optimism and his will to be-
lieve, expressed his life and the way he
had lived it. He was pleased with this
definition and he answered, "I don't
know about my painting, but I am proud
of my life."
Knowing he was soon to die, he al-
lowed no hint of his fears and mis-
givings to be seen. He was positive to
the end.
ROBERT JAY WOLFF
Brooklyn College
A. PHILIP McMAHON (1890-1947)
Amos Philip McMahon was born in
Warren, Ohio, the son of Amos Nelson
and Ellen Mary Sheppey McMahon, on
August 14, 1890. He prepared for col-
lege at the American School, Mexico
City, Mexico. His undergraduate years
at Harvard (1910-1913), ending with
the degree of magna cum laude, were
followed by graduate study. He was
Marshal of the candidates when he
took his degree in 1914, and also won
the Dante Prize (1914-1915). He took
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in
1916, in the field of Comparative Litera-