Moholy-Nagy, László American (b. Hungary, 1895-1946) TITLE ON OBJECT: Ascona yard, 1926 PUBLISHED TITLE: Ascona

László Moholy-Nagy was born in Hungary and served as an artillery officer in the First World War before completing his law degree. His early paintings showed his interest in German Expressionist painting, then in the early 1920s, he was influenced by Dada (particularly Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee) and then by the Russian Constructivists.

In 1921 he got married. He worked in close collaboration with his wife, photographer Lucia Moholy, and some of the photographs credited to him are their joint work or hers alone.

In 1924, Walter Gropius, the Director of the Bauhaus, met Moholy-Nagy and was so impressed by his ideas about the future of art and society that he asked him to take over the running of the foundation course (Johannes Itten, the previous course leader, had recently resigned.)

At the Bauhaus Moholy-Nagy joined some of the major artistic figures of the era, including Joseph Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer,Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Together with Gropius, Mohloy-Nagy proceeded to edit a series of fourteen books, including his Painting, Photography, Film that defined the philosophical framework for the Bauhaus program and set an agenda for much of art education in the twentieth century.

Increasing political pressure led both Moholy-Nagy and Gropius to resign in 1928. Moholy-Nagy experimented with stage design and photography. In the 1930s he moved to England to escape the Nazis, working for a while as a photographer, before moving to America. Lucia Moholy stayed in England, working as a photographer and teacher.

In Chicago he was invited to direct the 'New Bauhaus' and when this failed through lack of financial support, in January 1939 he opened the School of Design (later called the Institute of Design), explicitly founded on Bauhaus principles. Shortly after his death from leukaemia in 1946, this became financially successful with the influx of former GIs.