MoholyNagy

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter, photographer, designer, and educator who played a central role in the Bauhaus movement. Born in 1895 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he became a driving force in the integration of art with technology and industry. He pursued experimental photography, photograms (rayographs), typography, and light as media, and he advocated a flexible, interdisciplinary approach to art and design.

During his Bauhaus years, Moholy-Nagy served as a teacher and held positions in the photography and metal workshops. He worked to expand the curriculum beyond traditional painting and sculpture, emphasizing the interaction of form, machine processes, and new materials. His writings, most notably The New Vision (1929), articulated a philosophy of art shaped by industrial production, photography, film, and kinetic phenomena, arguing for a democratized, machine-informed aesthetic.

After the rise of the Nazi regime, Moholy-Nagy emigrated to the United States in 1937. He founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago, which later became the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. There, he continued to teach and develop design education, influencing generations of American photographers, graphic designers, and industrial designers. His work and ideas helped transplant Bauhaus principles to the United States and contributed to mid-century modernism.

Moholy-Nagy’s legacy lies in his insistence that art should engage with technology and production, and in his experimental use of photography, light, and mass media to redefine the possibilities of visual communication. He remains a key figure in the history of modern design and art education.