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Seminar III In Motion László Moholy-Nagy as a Transnational Artist 1366943 Submitted in part fulfilment for the degree of Postgraduate Diploma in History and Business of the Contemporary Art Market IESA/University of Warwick February 2014
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In Motion - Lázló Moholy-Nagy as a Transnational Artist

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Page 1: In Motion - Lázló Moholy-Nagy as a Transnational Artist

Seminar III

In Motion

László Moholy-Nagy as a Transnational Artist

1366943

Submitted in part fulfilment for the degree of Postgraduate Diploma in History and Business of the Contemporary Art Market

IESA/University of Warwick

February 2014

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Table of Contents  

 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS II

INTRODUCTION 1

TRANSNATIONALISM AS A METHODOLOGY 2

AVANT-GARDE AND INTERNATIONALISM IN BERLIN 4

PUBLICATIONS 5

DADA 7

CONSTRUCTIVISM 9

THE BAUHAUS YEARS 10

BERLIN, AMSTERDAM, LONDON AND THE U.S. 12

CONCLUSION 15

BIBLIOGRAPHY 16

ILLUSTRATIONS 17

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List of Illustrations

Figure I

László Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Kassák, Buch Neuer Künstler [Book of New Artists], Book spread (front and back cover), 1922

Figure II

László Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Photographie, Film, Book spread, 1925.

Figure III

László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, photogram, 1943, size and collection unknown

Figure IV

László Moholy-Nagy, Nickel Sculpture, 1921, Nickel plated iron welded, 33,6 x 17,5 x 23,8 cm, New York, The Museum of Modern Art

Figure IV

Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists, 1922, Moholy Nagy is in the last row, the third from right to left. Also in the picture are van Doesburg, El Lissitzki, Hans Richter. Photographer Unknown

Figure V

László Moholy-Nagy, Light Prop for an Electric Stage, 1930, Metal and plastic, electric motor, 151 x 70 x 70 cm, Cambridge (MA) Busch Resinger Museum

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In Motion – László Moholy-Nagy as a Transnational Artist

Introduction

László Moholy-Nagy was born in Hungary in 1895 and died in Chicago

at the age of 51. Having lived in five different countries throughout his

somewhat concise lifetime, he died as a North-American citizen. This was a

turbulent period in global history: he witnessed two world wars, as well a great

number of social and political transformations that would come as the aftermath.

The study In Motion: László Moholy-Nagy as a Transnational Artist sheds light

on Moholy-Nagy’s artistic undertakings, through the methodology of

transnationalism. ‘In Motion’ is a reference not only to the artist’s constant

relocations, but also to his last publication, Vision in Motion (1946), where he

states that ‘vision in motion is seeing while moving’.1

The significance of the transnational approach lies firstly on the fact that

the artist cannot be fit into a specific movement, neither was affiliated to a any

particular political current; secondly, on the aspect that Moholy-Nagy’s

biography and oeuvre evolved close together in a deep dynamism. His attitude

was that of engendering, practicing, supporting and teaching artistic or political

initiatives whenever he found those met his ideals.

1 László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago, Paul Theobald and Company, 1947), p. 12

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Transnationalism as a methodology

Interpreting Moholy-Nagy’s trajectory through a transnational approach

is relevant in the sense that his artistic production and biography faded

geographical, cultural and socio-political borders. Faithful to the belief that art

had the transformation power that would lead to a utopic society, Moholy was

constantly updating and superposing different concepts and visual languages

learned through an international network of artists and thinkers. Eventually, he

was able to surpass the idea of cosmopolitism, as well as that of internationalism

– both at the centre of the avant-garde’s reasoning.

The avant-gardes and its artistic movements flourished in the 1900’s,

while artists begun to widely interact across national borders; as a result, terms as

cosmopolitism, inter and supra-nationalism gained different nuances.

Transnationalism is a term that, by then, had not yet been incorporated in the

theoretical discourse; accordingly, transnationalism can be considered a

contemporary methodology that aims at an updated approach of past events.2

For the present study, it is important to differentiate transnationalism

from internationalism. For Bayly, both terms have the same meaning, with the

difference that transnational implies a sense of movement and interpenetration,

being usually ‘associated with the study of diasporas, social or political, which

cross national boundaries’.3 Moreover, flux and circulation are central concerns

in the transnational approach: ‘[it] is not simply that historical processes are

made in different places [internationalism] but that they are constructed in the

2 Patricia Seed in: Bayly, C. A., Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, Patricia Seed, ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 5 (2006), p. 1442 3 Bayly (2006), p. 1444

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movement between places, sites, and regions’.4

Additionally, transnational history ‘acknowledges the extraordinary

importance of states, empires, and the like, [but] it pays attention to networks,

processes, beliefs and institutions that transcend these politically defined

spaces’.5 To summarize, the transnational methodology targets at transcending

the nation-state’s politically defined territory, in order to focus on cultural and

economic circulation and shifts, provoked by people’s movements across

national frontiers. Moholy-Nagy duly stated that he did not believe in art as

much as he believed in people.6

As Beckert defines, ‘The transnational approach differs from the others

because it transcends the political and geographical territories by connecting

various parts of the world to one another through networks, institutions, ideas,

and processes’.7 Accordingly, a transnational approach of Lázló Moholy-Nagy’s

artistic practice is proposed through the analysis of these same connecting

strands: the investigation of his personal networks, the institutions he related

with, the creative concepts he developed, and the mediums he employed.

Avant-garde and internationalism in Berlin

As modernism settled, the avant-garde movements were established

across Europe, conveying utopian ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality.8 As a

4 Hofmeyr (2006), p. 1444 5 Beckert, (2006), p. 1454-1459 6 Hattula Moholy-Nagy in: Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London, 9 March – 4 June 2006) ed. Tate Publishing (London: 2006), p.115 7 Beckert (2006), p. 1446 8 Éva Forgács in: Berg, Hubert F. Van Den, Lidia Gluchowska, Eds., Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood – European Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth-Century (Walpole: Peeters, 2013), p. 145

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consequence of the shock caused by the Great War, those artists aspired to

improve and transform human society in its integrity. Striving to rethink and

reconfigure society through art, the concepts that shaped avant-garde artist’s

discourse and production usually travelled across countries being remodelled,

rethought or reinvented as they circulated. This circulation of people and

information is arguably avant-garde’s main transnational feature.

Before the Great War, the first exchanges between Parisian and German

artists took place. By the 1910’s, transnational displays in galleries such as Der

Sturm were seen (Moholy would work with this gallery later); artists from

different countries were shown in relation to one another. Simultaneously,

Meier-Graefe’s theories contemplated art’s autonomy above nationality issues; in

contrast, other critics resented the French influence while Der Brücke became

referential for German Expressionism.9 These opposite points of view regarding

a nationalist art production would prepare the ground for the avant-gardes’

internationalist requirements in Germany, where circumstances particularly

favoured discussions over nationalism.

Moholy-Nagy was among the many intellectuals who left Hungary due to

communist-oriented political inclinations made public during the Hungarian

Soviet Republic. He moved to Berlin in 1920, quickly engaging himself with the

avant-garde network that was established in Eastern Europe, and orbited mainly

around the Berliner scene. As Éva Forgács states, during that time, ‘The choice

to live in … Berlin as an artist … entailed participation in a highly politicized

9 Timothy Benson in: Berg, Hubert F. Van Den, Lidia Gluchowska, Eds., (2013), p. 7

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discourse between an old and a fledging new Germany’.10 The country had lost

the war and the Weimar Republic had been established as an effort towards a

politically and socially renewed country; as a consequence, reflections upon the

remodelling of ideologies were constantly at stake.

In the avant-garde context, the term international as an opposition to

nationalist ideals, ‘also gained the potential to be activated and contest the social

conditions around it’.11 By the 1920’s, the term had already gained a political

connotation: in conjunction with utopian and anarchist propositions, it had

become a form of activism in the internationalist movements, largely inspired by

the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Publications

Namely two factors contributed to the debate and dissemination of the

aesthetic and political ideals spread among the many vanguard groups. Firstly,

technological advances allowed people and things to move faster across

territories, diminishing distances and facilitating communication; secondly, the

surge of publications widely produced and distributed, containing texts, poetry

and visual works.12 Periodicals such as Ma or Der Sturm, frequently debated art,

nationalism and its concerns, as different approaches were given to it: from

Schwitters supranationalism, to Dada’s internationalism, or the expressionists’

late nationalism.

10 Forgács (2013), p. 145 11 Benson (2013), p. 2 12 Berg, Hubert F. Van Den, Lidia Gluchowska (2013), pp. i-xx

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Before moving to Berlin, Moholy spent a year in Vienna in 1919. There,

he contributed to the magazine Ma (Today). Published since 1916 by Lajos

Kassák, who was also a Hungarian emigrant, it propagated, among other

principles, the abolition of the nationhood and social classes.13 At the beginning,

the publication was inclined to expressionism, but with the influence and

connections proposed by Moholy, who became its Berlin correspondent, it would

then be closely connected to the Berliner avant-garde.

In 1922 the partnership between Moholy and Kassák led to the release of

the Book of New Artists, an innovative bilingual edition mainly comprised of

photographs (Fig. 1). The unprecedented creation of parallels between design,

technology, architecture and fine art, worked as a comprehensive representation

of the visual vocabulary being developed at that moment. It embraced the praise

for the machine inherited from the futurists, with images of newly released items

such as movie projectors or cars, shown alongside architecture shots, artworks or

musical scores. Another relevant aspect, is that the book could be understood by

everyone regardless the background or language spoken. Forgács believes that

‘the deep connection between the new art and the new technology attests to the

transnationalism of the new culture’.14

Moholy-Nagy soon understood the potential publications had as a form of

artistic statement and ideological dissemination. The visual concept initially

developed in the Book of New Artists would then be expanded to comprise a

collection of books he produced while at the Bauhaus. For those editions,

13 Forgács (2013), p. 153 14 Forgács (2013), p. 160

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Moholy created a layout that allowed images and text to be complementary read

(Fig. 2).

The publications ‘Painting, Photography, Film’, (1925); ‘The New Vision’

(1928); ‘The New Architecture and The Bauhaus’ (1935); ‘Abstract of an Artist’

(1944); and ‘Vision in motion’ (1946) embodied not only a strategy for spreading

ideas and theories, but can be considered artworks themselves, that ‘blurring the

borderline between art and design … celebrated internationalism as the concept

of universal creativity’.15 Art critic Richard Kostelanetz considers Vision in

Motion to be ‘among the masterpieces of conceptual art’, besides being one of

Moholy’s most significant artworks.16

Dada

Among the avant-garde groups that circulated in Berlin, two of them

represented major influences for Moholy-Nagy before he joined the Bauhaus:

Berlin Dada, and constructivism in its international trend.

Putting together pieces from a number of different cultures, alongside the

most varied artistic techniques, Dada had a program that was at the same time

social, political and aesthetic; yet, it was a denial of all that. Within the cultures it

embraced, French, Spanish, Russian and African could be found, just to name a

few. Those merging cultural influences took the form of poetry, theatre, dance,

music, collage, painting, publications, etc. In Moholy’s own words, ‘They

opened up the route for the surprising, embarrassing, and even the “nonsensical.”

15 Ibid., p. 160 16 Engelbrecht, Lloyd C., Moholy-Nagy: Mentor to Modernism (Cincinnati: Flying Trapeze Press, 2009) p.696

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… In the “Cabaret Voltaire,” Zurich (1916), some young emigrants started out

with performances full of bitterness against the “imperialistic” war’.17

Raised by Hugo Ball in the middle of the Great War, in addition to a

transnational approach, Dada had international aspirations from the beginning.

With echoes in the U.S., France, and Germany, it circulated in accordance with

the relocating tendency of the avant-garde’s movements. ‘The word Dada was an

arbitrary yet essential covering term activating the generic, international art

movement as the paradigmatic modernist apparatus of social and aesthetic

rebellion and progress.’18

After the group broke apart and spread, in 1920 the First International

Dada Fair happened in Berlin – Raoul Hausmann, one of Dada’s founders was

living there. The Dada-Messe also exhibited its connection to the Russian

constructivists, with Tatlin’s Monument to the Third international displayed.19

Moreover, works such as John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter's Prussian

Archangel raised big polemics and contributed to press articles being

internationally published in Prague, Paris, London, Argentina and the U.S. As a

result, around fifty artworks were scheduled to figure in an exhibition in New

York. 20

The influences Moholy absorbed from the Dadaists went beyond theory;

for example, Hanna Höch’s photomontages were essential for his developments

17 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1947), p. 311 18 Benson (2013), p. 14 19 It is interesting to think how it could have arrived there since the Russia’s borders were closed then. Ibid., p. 14 20 Wieland Herzfelde and Brigid Doherty October Vol. 105, Dada (Summer, 2003), pp. 93-104 Published by: The MIT Press, p. 94

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in photography, with her work appearing in Painting, Photography, Film.21 The

resulting photomontages and photograms production may also be seen as a way

Moholy found to fit in the industrial age, raising new possibilities through the

artistic use of the machine (Fig. 3).22 These methods would be continuously

explored during all the artist’s life.

Constructivism

In 1922 Moholy exhibited his Nickel Sculpture (1921) (Fig. 4) in

Düsseldorf’s First International Art Exhibition. While the exhibition aimed at

gathering artists from the largest number of nationalities possible, a congress

went on, exposing the too general and maybe misunderstood idea of

internationalism. ‘The exhibition organisers who had assembled [the works] had

assumed that ‘international’ meant regional diversity, a retrospective, even

passive, collection of distinct tendencies.’23 Nevertheless, a more progressive

faction was among the exhaustive selection of artists.

By then, the Berlin Dadas had joined the Russian Constructivists and De

Stijl Dutches to form a new avant-garde front, as Hausmann left the exhibition

screaming they were all cannibals and singing the Internationale.24 Meetings that

went on in places such as Moholy’s apartment brought together names as Hans

Richter, El Lissitsky and Theo Van Doesburg, among others. The manifesto ‘A

Call for Elementarist Art’ was published in De Stijl a year earlier; and within the

21 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, Painting, Photography, Film (London: Lund Humphries, 1969), p. 106 22 Rose-Carol Washton Long in James-Chakraborty, Kathleen, Ed., Bauhaus Culture – From Weimar to the Cold War (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), p. 51 23 Benson (2013), p. 16 24 Ibid., p. 17

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meetings, the participating artists agreed to assume a contrary position to the

expressionist individuality and nationalist tendencies seen in Düsseldorf.

After the congress, constructivism’s international identity was already

established, culminating in the Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists (Fig. 5)

in September 1922 – Moholy-Nagy also participated. This dynamic group with

its transnational, collective, technological ideals would also trigger new

methodologies when some of its members got involved with the Bauhaus,

particularly from 1923 on, when Moholy-Nagy was invited by Walter Gropius to

join the school.

The Bauhaus Years

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in Weimar. Gropius, its first director,

believed that the school would be able to ‘lead post-war Germany society in a

process of social, economic, and cultural renewal’.25 He idealized merging arts,

crafts and architecture into an all-embracing practice, having invited teachers

from diverse backgrounds to work in partnership with craftsmen in the school’s

workshops.

Like the other avant-gardist fronts, the Bauhaus strived to endure apart

from an ever-growing majority of conservative-nationalist Germans. Gropius

was constantly trying to slip away from government pressures that considered the

school economically insignificant and culturally unfit. Some said the school was

‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘Spartacist’, the worst accusations possible in the eyes of the

25 John V. Maciuka in: James-Chakraborty, Kathleen, Ed., Bauhaus Culture – From Weimar to the Cold War (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) p. 1

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conservative group.26 As an effort to pull through, in 1923 Gropius announced

the Bauhaus’s new directions: ‘Art and Technology – a New Unit’;

correspondingly, Moholy-Nagy was invited to take over the metal workshop,

eventually assuming Johannes Itten’s preliminary course.27 Moholy’s ventures

went in the same direction as Gropius’s, turning him into a key character for the

new policy.

The five years spent as a Bauhaus tutor allowed Moholy to expand the

background gained during the Berlin period. Besides having released the already

mentioned collection of books, Moholy had the possibility to reflect upon art

teaching methodologies, formal and material uses, collective versus individual

artistic practices. Soon he would be trying to transcend the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’

concept by formulating the need of an artistic practice that merged with life

itself: ‘What we need is not the 'Gesamtkunstwerk', alongside and separated from

which life flows by, but a synthesis of all the vital impulses … the all-embracing

Gesamtwerk (life) which abolishes all isolation, in which all individual

accomplishments proceed from a biological necessity and culminate in a

universal necessity.’28

Another important aspect of the Bauhaus’s years, is that in the school

Moholy had access to all its facilities, while being in contact with the

heterogeneous community members. This way, he continued experimenting with

photography and painting but would aggregate other techniques to his

curriculum: he worked with costume and lightning design for theatre in

26 Forgács (2013), p.148 27 Willett, John, The New Sobriety – Art and Politics in the Weimar Period 1917-33 (Hampshire: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p 81-82 28 Moholy-Nagy, László, Painting, Photography, Film (London: Lund Humphries, 1969), p. 17

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partnership with Oskar Schlemmer and Erwin Piscator, curated exhibitions, and

designed posters.

Hattula Moholy-Nagy believes that the Bauhaus years were the ones that

determined Moholy’s transnationalism, as people and their human potential

became more important to him.29 But with the Nazi Party nearing and pressures

on Gropius getting stronger, both him and Moholy would resign in 1928. The

Nazis shot down the school five years later.

Berlin, Amsterdam, London and the U.S.

After leaving Dessau in 1928, Moholy kept producing as an artist, but his

financial income came mainly from the works he did as a freelance designer. As

Terence Senter states, those years ‘fully tested his mission and integrity’.30

Nevertheless, he took the opportunities he had to experiment with new

techniques – namely colour photography and film.

Initially, he moved back to Berlin where he lived from 1928 to 1934, and

opened a design studio. An important accomplishment at that time was Light

Prop for an Electric Stage (fig. 5), a project initiated in 1922. The piece unfolded

to be more than a kinetic sculpture, having become a film as well as exhibited as

an installation in 1930, in Paris. Having the chance to go to France in 1929,

Moholy also produced his first short film, Marseille Vieille Port and got

acquainted with artists from Abstraction-Création.

29 Hattula Moholy-Nagy (2006), pp.113-114 30 Terence A. Senter in: Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London, 9 March – 4 June 2006) ed. Tate Publishing (London: 2006), p. 85

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He then lived in Amsterdam for another year, where he had a solo show

in the Stedelijk Museum, and gave a series of talks. Furthermore, he became the

artistic director of the International Textiles magazine, a work that also gave him

the chance to investigate colour photography’s artistic possibilities. Though for

some time he still kept his Berliner office, arguably Moholy’s definitive depart

from Germany was Goebbel’s Chamber of Culture summoning to present his

paintings personally for censorship. Though he managed not to attend, his works

were included in the 1937 wretched Degenerate Art Exhibition.

By the end of 1935 Moholy was established in London, working in

numerous advertising jobs. Gropius was also living there and they kept a close

relationship, often discussing the possibility of opening an English Bauhaus

branch. This never happened, since Moholy encountered harsh criticism and

incomprehensiveness among the British artistic, industrial and commercial

circles – he considered Englishmen lacking the capacity to understand modern

thinking.31 Yet, his lectures and talks were usually successful even if they raised

polemics, and his most important contributions in the English period were

arguably those education-related such as the supporting of the new village

colleges.

When Moholy moved to the U.S. in 1937, his hopes were renewed with

the prospection of a new life, away from what he considered a desperate situation,

in an Europe that once more prepared for war.32 However, things did not go as

planned, and the New Bauhaus he had been called to direct closed one year after

its opening, due to the II World War imminent outburst. The following years he

31 Senter (2006), p. 87-91 32 Ibid., p. 90

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endeavoured to maintain Chicago’s School of Design, which he founded with his

own earnings; the school still exists, and now is called Institution of Design.

Despite the fact that in 1935 Moholy was diagnosed with leukaemia, he kept his

position as the school’s director and remained painting and photographing, until

his death in 1946.

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Conclusion

In sum, addressing László Moholy-Nagy’s trajectory through

transnational scope enables an understanding of his detachment from nation-

related issues. He was connected to some of the main avant-garde movements

developing a versatile oeuvre, which was reshaped every time he learned about

new possibilities, being especially fond of those enabled by new technologies.

Reckoning the importance of collective practices, Moholy went beyond his

artistic production to become an eminent educator. He acknowledged the

‘gesamtkunstwerk’ as the art that is one with life. The dynamism intrinsic to his

character led him to singularly contribute with artistic photography, publication

design and education in different countries and circles.

Moholy avoided political associations, but was keen to engage with

groups of people whenever he saw they shared his vision. That does not mean he

was alienated from the political environment he dwelled, but rather that he chose

art and education as tools for transforming society. Even if he was never able to

see his utopic longings come true, Moholy’s optimistic nature made him hold on

to his ideals. He finishes his last book, ‘Vision in Motion’, with the following

statement about his project for an international cultural working assembly:

‘In accepting the responsibility of initiative and stimulus, it could serve

as the intellectual trustee of a new age in finding a new unity of purpose … It

could write a new charter of human life, culminating in the right to and the

capacity of self expression (the best bond for social coherence) without

censorship or economic pressure.

It could translate Utopia into action.’33

33 László Moholy-Nagy (1947), p. 361

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Bibliography

Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London, 9 March – 4 June 2006) ed. Tate Publishing (London: 2006) Bayly, C. A., Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, Patricia Seed, ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 5 (2006), pp. 1441-1464 Berg, Hubert F. Van Den, Lidia Gluchowska, Eds., Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood – European Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth-Century (Walpole: Peeters, 2013) Engelbrecht, Lloyd C., Moholy-Nagy: Mentor to Modernism (Cincinnati: Flying Trapeze Press, 2009) James-Chakraborty, Kathleen, Ed., Bauhaus Culture – From Weimar to the Cold War (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) Macdonald, Simon, ‘Transnational history: a review of past and present scholarship’, www.ucl.ac.uk/cth/objectives/transnational_history_simon_macdonald, consulted 15 December 2013 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, Painting, Photography, Film (London: Lund Humphries, 1969) Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist (New York: George Wittenborn, 1961) Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1947) Willett, John, The New Sobriety – Art and Politics in the Weimar Period 1917-33 (Hampshire: Thames and Hudson, 1978)  Wieland  Herzfelde  and  Brigid  Doherty  October  Vol.  105,  Dada  (Summer,  2003),  pp.  93-­‐104  Published  by:  The  MIT  Press

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Illustrations

Figure I

László Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Kassák, Buch Neuer Künstler [Book of New Artists], Book spread (front and back cover), 1922

Figure II

László Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Photographie, Film, Book spread, 1925.

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Figure III

László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, photogram, 1943, size and collection unknown

Figure IV

László Moholy-Nagy, Nickel Sculpture, 1921, Nickel plated iron welded, 33,6 x 17,5 x 23,8 cm, New York, The Museum of Modern Art

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Figure IV

Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists, 1922, Moholy Nagy is in the last row, the third from right to left. Also in the picture are van Doesburg, El Lissitzki, Hans Richter. Photographer Unknown

Figure V

László Moholy-Nagy, Light Prop for an Electric Stage, 1930, Metal and plastic, electric motor, 151 x 70 x 70 cm, Cambridge (MA) Busch Resinger Museum