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 Biographical
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LONDON (1935-1937)
© 2004 Hattula Moholy-Nagy
In the spring of 1935, Moholy moved to London. He set up a design
studio with György Kepes, who had collaborated with him
in Berlin since the early 1930s. His fellow countryman, the
director of London Films, Alexander Korda, invited Moholy to
design the special effects and sets for a film, “Things
to Come.” Moholy created an assemblage of bright, almost
ethereal structures and kinetic sculptures of transparent materials.
But these designs turned out to be rather too far in the future
and so, in the end, the sets shown in the released version of
this film classic were designed by Vincent Korda and the special
effects were by Ned Mann.
Moholy did a great deal of camera photography in England. His
photographs illustrate three books published in England on London’s
street markets, Eton, and Oxford, as well as several magazine
articles. He continued to explore the potentials of color photography
and he made at least two short films, one about lobsters and
the other about the new London Zoo at Whipsnade.
Although Moholy had been painting on opaque plastics since the
mid-1920s, he now began to work with transparent materials.
He wrote that the use of transparent plastic forced him to reincorporate
texture and shading into his compositions. He also saw the potential
of incorporating motion. The earliest paintings actually were
movable plastic leaves attached to a white board. Subsequently
he began to incise and paint the plastic support or to cut holes
into it, and to mount it above a white or pale gray surface.
When light was directed onto the picture, the cast shadows were
incorporated into the composition and moved with the light source.
By the mid-1940s he molded the painted plastic and set it into
a wooden base. Since these novel creations did not have a name,
he called them “space modulators.” An unfortunate
aspect of his fascination with Plexiglas and other transparent
plastics, however, is that they are unstable, so few of these
beautiful and innovative works have survived.
CHICAGO (1937-1946)
©
2004 Hattula Moholy-Nagy
In 1937 the Association of Arts and Industries, a group of Chicago
businessmen interested in incorporating contemporary design
into their products, decided to open a school of their own.
They were impressed with design education at the German Bauhaus
and invited Walter Gropius to direct their new school. Gropius,
however, had just accepted a position at Harvard University
and recommended his former Bauhaus collaborator, László
Moholy-Nagy. Moholy was delighted with this opportunity to teach
again, and in the fall of 1937 he moved his family to Chicago.
The school opened in October in a mansion that had once belonged
to the department store magnate, Marshall Field. Moholy called
the school, “the New Bauhaus: American School of Design”
and began to implement the curriculum of the Bauhaus as it had
been under Gropius. But the New Bauhaus closed in June of 1938,
a victim of student unrest and financial difficulties. Moholy
had to return to commercial work, but he did not abandon his
vision of bringing Bauhaus education to America.
In February, 1939, he was able to open his own school, which
he named The School of Design in Chicago. Its first location
of several was in a former bakery on Ontario Street. This school
was made possible by the generous support of Walter P. Paepcke,
director of the Container Corporation of America, who had been
a member of the now-defunct Association of Arts and Industries.
Paepcke also made available for School of Design summer sessions
a property near Somonauk, Illinois, about 75 miles southwest
of Chicago. Additionally, he also assumed the essential role
of a liaison between the School and the Chicago business community,
whose support was crucial for the success of the School, but
who often didn’t understand what Moholy was trying to
accomplish.
In 1944 the School of Design was reorganized and renamed The
Institute of Design in Chicago. In 1945 it moved into temporary
quarters at State and Rush Streets. In the summer of 1946, the
Institute of Design organized, “The New Vision in Photography,”
a symposium of famous photographers that attracted national
attention to the school and to Chicago. In 1946 the Institute
of Design finally moved into its own building, the former home
of the Chicago Historical Society on Dearborn Street. In 1949
the school became a department of the Illinois Institute of
Technology, where continues today as the direct descendant of
Moholy’s school.
Even with the school absorbing so much of his time and energy,
Moholy continued to paint, photograph, lecture, and publish.
He was able to maintain his extraordinarily high level of creative
productivity in part because he was blessed with great reserves
of energy. But he could not have accomplished all that he did
during his years in Chicago without the efficient and dedicated
support of his wife, Sibyl.
He set up his easel at home in a corner of the living room and
produced paintings on canvas and plastic, working mainly at
night when he returned home from the school. His style of the
1940s was dynamic, characterized by curvilinear forms and bright,
clear colors. In particular his works on paper demonstrate his
great versatility. After he came to the United States, he began
to make stationary and mobile sculptures of Plexiglas. Sometimes
he mounted the sculptures on a shiny surface, sometimes he added
curved polished metal rods. He continued to make and exhibit
photograms, which have the energetic, often curvilinear style
of his paintings and sculptures.
But what of his camera photography? Even today Moholy’s
published and exhibited camera photographs are invariably images
he made in Europe. Photo historians appear to assume that Moholy
gave up camera photography after he arrived in Chicago. Yet
he did continue to photograph, primarily with a 35 mm Leica
camera he had acquired in England. The main cause of this historical
misconception is that Moholy no longer appeared interested in
bringing his camera images before the public. Although a few
black and white images intended as advertisements have survived,
most are personal records of his family. Another important factor
is that during the 1940s, Moholy photographed primarily in color.
He continued to experiment with the new Kodachrome slide film
that had come on the market in 1937. He made hundreds of 35
mm color slides, of which a remnant has survived. They depict
all of the subjects of his earlier black/white photographs:
travel pictures, portraits, formalist compositions, as well
as documentation of the activities of the School. He made beautiful
abstract images, successfully creating works of art from nothing
but light and color. But the processes of color reproduction
of that time were simply not up to his standards and so his
latest camera photography is still virtually unknown.
Moholy also continued to make short 16 mm films, including an
important series about the school. Most of these later, silent
films were in color. Besides vividly documenting the activities
and products of the School, they were also intended as promotion
materials, and he lectured to them as he traveled around the
country.
Moholy’s last book, Vision in Motion, sets out his educational
philosophy and its foundation in the principles of the Bauhaus.
He presents its material expression in the curriculum and the
products of the School. To this day, Vision in Motion remains
the best guide to the goals and achievements of the Institute
of Design under Moholy’s direction.
In the winter of 1945 Moholy was diagnosed with leukemia. He
underwent X-ray treatments, which enabled him to carry on his
superhuman schedule for another year. He died on 24 November
1946 at the tragically early age of 51. His ashes are buried
in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, his adopted city.
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