The Impact of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

In 1923 Itten’s replacement as head of the preliminary course was the Hungarian constructivist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a restless experimental painter, photographer, film maker, sculptor and graphic designer. New materials such as acrylic resin and plastic, new techniques such as photomontage and the photogram, and visual means including kinetic motion, light and transparency were encompassed in his wide-ranging investigation. Young and articulate, Moholy-Nagy had a marked influence on the evolution of Bauhaus instruction and philosophy. He became Gropius’s “prime minister” at the Bauhaus. Gropius and Moholy-Nagy collaborated as editors for the catalogue for the 1923 exhibition.

Herbert Bayer, cover design, Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, 1919-1923, 1923. Geometrically constructed letterforms printed in red and blue on a black background are compressed into a square.	Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, title page, Staatliches  Bauhaus in Weimar. This page structure is based on a rhythmic series of right angles. Stripes applied to two words create a second spatial plane.

Moholy-Nagy contributed an important statement about typography, describing it as “ a tool of communication.” He stated that it must be communication in its most intense form. The Emphasis must be on absolute clarity and legibility. He added that communication must never be impaired by a priori esthetics. Letters must never be forced into a preconceived framework, for instance a square.

In Graphic design Moholy-Nagy advocated an uninhibited use of all linear directions and the use of all typefaces, typesizes, geometric forms, colors, etc. He wanted to create a new language of typography whose elasticity, variability and freshness of typographical composition was exclusively dictated by the inner law of expression and the optical effect. His theory was that the essence of art and design was the concept and not the execution and that the two could be separated. Gyorgy Kepes is known as the founder of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an association designed to promote creative collaboration between artists and scientists. He started off as Moholy-Nagy’s assistant in 1929 where he had to complete the execution of Moholy-Nagy’s commissions.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, proposed title page for Broom, 1923.

This inventive design for the avant-garde magazine shows

how thoroughly Moholy-Nagy understood cubism and Lissitzky.

Moholy-Nagy’s passion for typography and photography inspired a Bauhaus interest in visual communications and led to important experiments in the unification of these two arts. He saw graphic design, particularly the poster, as evolving toward the typophoto. He called this objective integration of word and image to communicate a message with immediacy “the new visual literature”. Moholy-Nagy’s 1923 Pneumatik poster is an experimental typophoto. In that year, he wrote that photography’s objective presentation of facts could free the viewer form being dependent on another person’s interpretation. He saw photography influencing poster design by techniques of enlargement, distortion, dropouts, double exposures, and montage.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, typophoto poster for tires, 1923.

Letterforms, photography, and design elements are

integrated into an immediate and unified communication.

In typography, he advocated emphatic contrasts and bold use of color. Absolute clarity of communication without preconceived aesthetic notions was stressed. As a photographer, Moholy-Nagy used the camera as a tool for design. Conventional compositional ideas yielded to unexpected organization, primarily through the use of light to design the space. The normal viewpoint was replaced by the worm’s-eye, bird’s-eye, extreme close-up, and angled viewpoints. Texture, light and dark, interplay and repetition are qualities of such works as Chairs at Margate.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Chairs at Margate, 1935.

 The juxtaposition oftwo images creates a contrast of pattern and texture and introduces a

process of change into the two-dimensional image.

In his growing enthusiasm for photography, Moholy-Nagy antagonized the Bauhaus painters by proclaiming the ultimate victory of photography over painting. He started experimented with photograms in 1922. The following year he began to make photomontages, which he called photo plastics. Moholy-Nagy believed the photogram, because it allowed an artist to capture a patterned interplay of light and dark on a sheet of light-sensitive paper without a camera, represented the essence of photography. He saw his photo plastics not just as the results of a collage technique but also as a manifestation of a process for arriving at a new expression that could become both more creative and more functional than straightforward imitative photography.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Photogram, 1922. Light itself becomes a malleable medium for generation design and form.	Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, The World Foundation, 1927.  In this satirical photo plastic, Moholy-Nagy shows “quack-clacking super-geese [pelicans]” observing “the simplicity of the world constructed as a leg show.”