Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Moholy-nagy was a Hungarian constructivist, he studied law before turning to art, and he explored various types of media, photography, film, painting, sculpture and graphic design. He had taken over Itten’s role as head of the preliminary course. Moholy-Nagy marked influence on the evolution of the Bauhaus instruction and philosophy. He eventually became Gropious’s prime minister at the Bauhaus as the director pushed for a new wholeness of art and technology.

Moholy-Nagy contributed an important statement about typography; he described it as “a tool of communication. It must be communication in its most intense form. The emphasis must be on absolute clarity… Legibility – communication must never be forced into a preconceived framework, for instance a square. He supported the idea “an uninhibited use of all linear directions. We use all typefaces, type sizes, geometric forms, colours, etc. we want to create a new language of typography whose electricity, variability and freshness of typography composition are exclusively dictated by the inner law of expression and optical effect.

Moholy-Nagy’s passion for typography and photography inspired a Bauhaus interest in visual communication which had led to important experiments. He saw graphic design, in particular the poster, as evolving toward the typo photo. He called this “the new visual literature” he saw photography influencing poster design, which demands instantaneous communication by techniques of enlargement, distortion, double exposures, montage etc…  

Moholy 1926 “Pneumatik” poster this is create with tinted covering and photo collage.  He wrote that photography’s objective presentation of facts could free the viewer from depending on another person interpretation.  

Moholy-Nagy used the camera as a tool for design; compositional ideas to unexpected organization, primarily through the use of light to design the space. (this sometimes included shadows) The normal viewpoint was replaced by worm’s eye, bird’s eye, extreme close-up and angled viewpoints. Moholy-Nagy’s started experimenting with photomontage which he called photo plastics, Moholy-Nagy believed the photogram, represented the essence of photography. The objects he used to create photograms were chosen for their light-modulating properties. Photo plastics could be emotional, insightful, complex and unexpected juxtapositions.

Reference:

Meggs P. B. and Purvis A. W. 1998. 5th Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons , Inc.

Art Directory, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, [online] Availble at: http://www.moholy-nagy.eu/ [accessed 24 November 2013]