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THE FIRST PERIOD IN BERLIN (1920-1923)
© 2004 Hattula Moholy-Nagy
During this period, the most significant development in his
art is that it became completely abstract. He was strongly influenced
by Russian Constructivism, especially the works of the artist,
El Lissitzky, who visited Berlin in the early 1920s. Constructivist
art attempted to express a system of universal, classic, and
communal values through geometric forms that had no connotations
in the natural and man-made world. Constructivist paintings
weren’t supposed to remind one of anything concrete. Furthermore,
Moholy was strongly attracted to Constructivist social philosophy,
which saw art and the artist as active agents in improving society.
In their art Constructivists tried to evoke the world as they
thought it should be. In short, they were Utopians.
Accordingly, Moholy strove to eliminate the personal touch from
his paintings. He tried to keep the painted surfaces as flat
and smooth as possible. He gave his works alpha-numeric titles
as though, he wrote, they were automobiles or other industrial
products. He embarked upon a lifetime preoccupation with light
and with transparency.
Besides painting on canvas, Moholy continued to work with collages
on paper. He produced prints and made sculptures of wood, glass,
and metal. In 1921 he married Lucia Schulz (later known as Lucia Moholy).
She was born in 1894 near Prague in what is now the Czech Republic and died
in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1989. Her family spoke German, and
as a young woman she moved to Germany to be closer to German
culture. She was a writer, an editor, and a talented photographer,
a capable woman who was of invaluable help to Moholy.
Around 1922 Moholy re-discovered the photogram and Lucia helped
him perfect his methods. A photogram is a photographic image
made without a camera. Objects are set directly upon photosensitive
paper or placed between a source of light and the paper to cast
shadows upon it. The photosensitive paper is exposed and then
developed like any other photographic print. Moholy’s
first photograms were made in daylight on brown printing out
paper. His later work was done in the darkroom where he could
use paper of larger size and exercise more control over lighting
conditions. His earliest photograms resemble his Constructivist
art, but by the mid-1920s he was skillfully manipulating light
and shadow to develop a distinctive photogram style. Ordinary
objects were transformed into abstract compositions of luminous,
ambiguous forms floating through dark space
.
A photogram is a unique image. But it can, in turn, be photographed
to provide a negative from which other prints can be made. And
it can be copied directly as a reversed image by placing another
sheet of photosensitive paper on it and shining a light through
both sheets. Moholy used this technique often to study its effects
on texture and composition. Photograms fascinated Moholy for
the rest of his life and he never stopped producing them.
In 1922 he exhibited at the important Der Sturm (The Storm)
Gallery in Berlin. This show brought him to the attention of
Walter Gropius, the founder and director of the Bauhaus, at
that time located in Weimar. He hired Moholy as a master, or
teacher, and in 1923 László and Lucia left Berlin
for Weimar.
THE BAUHAUS YEARS (1923-1928)
©
2004 Hattula Moholy-Nagy
The German architect. Walter Gropius, had founded the Bauhaus
in 1919 as a new kind of school of architecture, art, and design.
Its aim was to educate the whole person in the belief that such
an education would give the student a better grasp of society
and how it could be improved by the products he or she would
design. Experimentation and teamwork were encouraged. The stated
goal of the Bauhaus was to promote “a new unity of art,
science, and technology in the service of humanity.” This
explicit emphasis on social responsibility came close to Moholy’s
own hope of improving society, which had emerged from his wartime
experiences and had been reinforced by his adoption of Constructivist
social values. And his presence at the Bauhaus was important
to Gropius, who was involved in a confrontation with some of
his faculty over which direction the school should take. Gropius,
too, can be regarded as another of Moholy’s mentors. They
enjoyed a close friendship extending over twenty years until
Moholy’s death.
Moholy’s five years at the Bauhaus were pivotal with regard
to his later career. The Bauhaus was acquiring international
fame, which gave Moholy the opportunity to meet artists, art
historians, museum curators, art dealers, and other members
of the American and European avant-garde. Furthermore, when
he came to found his own school in Chicago, he had a ready-made
pedagogical blueprint at his disposal. He also aimed at educating
the whole person, and he incorporated the Bauhaus emphases on
teamwork and experimentation, as well as its methods and exercises.
In 1925 the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau, into buildings
Gropius had designed for it. Lucia Moholy became the official
Bauhaus photographer and the iconic images of the Dessau school
are hers.
Moholy’s painting continued to evolve. His compositions
became less static. Besides canvas, he also painted on aluminum
and some of the opaque plastics that were being produced at
this time. He experimented with spray guns. He continued to make camera photographs. Some recorded Lucia
or his friends. Most of the better-known images of this time,
however, emphasize composition over content and bear strong
resemblances to his paintings. His photographs are characterized
by multiple exposures, strong diagonals, worm’s-eye views,
bird’s-eye views, and the incorporation of shadows into
the composition. He continued to produce photograms.
And, like several other artists of that time, he also produced
a body of Dadaist photomontages that he referred to as “photoplastics.”
Later when he earned a living through commercial design work,
he integrated the results of many of his artistic experiments.
He often used photomontage, incorporating drawings, photograms,
and photographs. In keeping with Bauhaus philosophy, he felt
there was no barrier between fine art and commercial art.
He published many articles that were translated into several
languages, and he wrote two books for the Bauhaus Books series,
which he co-edited with Walter Gropius: Malerei Fotographie
Film (Painting Photography Film) and Von Material zu Architecture
(published in English in several editions as The New Vision).
In 1928 Gropius resigned the directorship of the Bauhaus and
resumed his architectural practice in Berlin. Moholy and Lucia
also returned to Berlin, where their marriage broke up and they
separated.
THE SECOND PERIOD IN BERLIN AND A YEAR IN AMSTERDAM (1928-1934)
©
2004 Hattula Moholy-Nagy
Moholy was extremely active during this, his second stay in
Berlin. He had to
be because he was now working as a free-lance designer. Besides
advertising, he also created exhibitions, book jackets, posters,
and stage designs and costumes. Some of his most famous camera
images date from this period.
A new development was printing negative images, which, similar
to negative photograms, allowed him to explore the different
impacts tone and shading
had upon composition.
He traveled widely, cultivating international contacts. From
1930 through 1936 Moholy was a regular guest at the summer retreats
hosted by Hélène de Mandrot at the castle of La
Sarraz in Switzerland. This contact probably came about through
his friendship with the Swiss art historian, Sigfried Giedion,
and his wife, Carola Giedion-Welcker. Mme. de Mandrot invited
the most prominent members of the European avant-garde. At those
men-only retreats Moholy was able to build an international
network that led, among other things, to memberships in several
international organizations, exhibitions of his work in France,
Switzerland, and then-Czechoslovakia, and travel to Scandinavia
and Greece. He lectured widely and continued to publish his
photographs and
journal articles.
Between 1929 and 1937 he created several short films, nearly
all in 16 mm format, of which seven are still extant. All were
in black and white, and some had soundtracks, although no copies
with sound appear to have survived. His best-known film was
made around 1930. Called Lichtspiel schwarz weiss grau (Lightplay
black white gray), it recorded the movements and light effects
produced by the Light-Space Modulator, a kinetic sculpture that
he designed, constructed of metal and glass and driven by an
electric motor. Moholy wrote that he learned a great deal from
this sculpture and it turns up in his photography and paintings
over the next decade.
It was through his work with film that Moholy met his second
wife. Sibylle Pietzsch (later known as Sibyl Moholy-Nagy) was
born in Dresden, Germany,
in 1903, and died in New York City in 1971. She was a gifted
writer, eventually
in both German and English, and became an architectural historian,
critic, and professor. After an undistinguished career as an
actress in the 1920s, she
had moved to Berlin and worked as a film dramaturge and scriptwriter.
She and Moholy had two daughters, Hattula, and Claudia, who
died in 1971.
After Hitler came to power in 1933 it became increasingly difficult
for avant-garde artists, architects, or designers to make a
living in Germany. The forced closure of the Bauhaus, which
had moved from Dessau to Berlin, took place the same year. In
1934 Moholy accepted a job doing exhibition and advertising
work in Amsterdam. A significant development during his year
in Holland was his use of color photography, at first in his
commercial work. These earliest color transparencies were made
on glass plates, or on acetate. He traveled regularly to London
to learn color photographic processes there.
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