Laszlo Moholy-Nagy – a brilliant artist, a great experimenter and an outstanding art theorist

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was also an established art theorist and was active in teaching for many years. A prestigious university in the Hungarian capital is named after this great man.

Biography

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was born into a Jewish family in the village of Bachborsod, in the south of present-day Hungary. When the boy was five years old, his father left his wife with three young children, and they moved to live with his mother’s brother Gustav Nagy, an influential lawyer. It was in honor of this close relative that at the age of fifteen, Laszlo changed his surname to Nagy.

After the gymnasium, Laszlo entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Budapest, and his uncle sponsored his studies. While still a student, young Nagy began to write poetry and some of them were published in the local newspaper. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. Laszlo was promoted to the rank of junior officer and sent to the eastern front to serve in the artillery. It was then that he became interested in painting, creating sketches in a field notebook with crayons and watercolors.

After retiring from the army in 1918, he entered the private art school of Robert Bereny.

The first exhibition of the artist’s paintings took place in Szeged in November 1919. Stung by the cold reception, Laszlo decided to leave Hungary and went to Vienna. He lived in the capital of Austria for a year, after which he moved to Berlin, where he met a young girl named Lucia Schultz. Young people fell in love with each other and soon got married. Thanks to his first wife, Laszlo became interested in photography, and it was this type of fine art that subsequently brought him worldwide fame.

Already the first exhibition of photographs by Moholy-Nagy in 1922 was a resounding success. Critics vying praised the young artist. He quickly became a favorite of the Berlin public and made many new friends from among the metropolitan bohemians.

He devoted five years to teaching at the prestigious educational institution Moholy-Nagy.

During this time he wrote several books on art theory and became one of the most respected professors. But in 1928 the Weimar authorities stopped funding the school. Then the artist divorced his first wife and returned to Berlin. He became interested in advertising graphics, making theatrical scenery and even shooting black and white films. And he has achieved significant success in these areas of activity.

In 1931, Laszlo married a second time to the German actress Sibylla Pitzsch.

This marriage turned out to be much more successful than the first, in which the artist had two beautiful daughters – Hattula and Claudia.

In 1937, at the invitation of a friend, the fire left for America. Moholy-Nagy quickly acquired useful contacts in America and organized generous funding for the educational institution. He became a very successful headmaster.

Shortly after the end of World War II, doctors diagnosed the master with a terrible diagnosis – blood cancer. Overcoming pain, the artist continued to engage in creativity until his death and headed the newly created Institute of Design, but the disease quickly destroyed his body. On November 24, 1946, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy died in his Chicago apartment.