"My belief is that mathematically harmonious shapes, executed precisely, are filled with emotional quality, and that they represent the perfect balance between feeling and intellect."
Laszo Moholy-Nagy is an iconic figure in graphic design. The Hungarian born artist is synonymous with the Bauhaus, and was at various times a painter, photographer, sculptor, teacher, typographer, printmaker, and industrial designer. Innovative and experimental, he worked with new synthetic materials such as Rhodoid, Galalith and Perspex, and took up color photography when it was in its infancy.
As a painter, he developed an abstract style influenced by Kasimir Malewitsch and El Lissitzky, and is considered one of the most important artists of Constructivism. His paintings imply movement through layering and spatial effects. He uses straight lines and regular shapes in mostly black, grey and red with an occasional blue or yellow. Many of his early paintings appear inspired by mechanical shapes, gears, levers, and typographical characters. Combining Constructivism and Dadaism, he imbues controlled geometric forms with a playful, improvised quality.
Fascinated with the fusion of art and technology, he and his Bauhaus cohorts considered the machine to be a positive instrument for society. An instrument in need of well-considered design at both the industrial and product levels.
Moholy-Nagy apparently considered himself, as an artist, to be primarily a photographer. He said “photography could create a whole new way of seeing the outside world that the human eye could not,” and “it is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be illiterate of the future.”
He experimented with a light-sensitive photo technique, the photogram, in the early twenties. Placing objects on light sensitive paper and exposing the paper to light; the objects on the paper keep the paper from being exposed, and reveal a shape. This experimentation was concerned with the interplay between light, dark, and the two-dimensional paper, creating depth and motion.
Moholy-Nagy’s legacy of surrealism is evident in his photomontages featuring human and animal figures in strange formations, and his black and white Bauhaus balcony photos.
He founded the Chicago Institute of Design in 1938, bringing Bauhaus methodologies to the USA. These methodologies are the modern day Basic Design course that have become some of the key foundational courses offered in architectural and design schools all over the world.
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007/foto/fullscreen/fig_3.shtm
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425308900/116447/landscape.html
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20532
As a painter, he developed an abstract style influenced by Kasimir Malewitsch and El Lissitzky, and is considered one of the most important artists of Constructivism. His paintings imply movement through layering and spatial effects. He uses straight lines and regular shapes in mostly black, grey and red with an occasional blue or yellow. Many of his early paintings appear inspired by mechanical shapes, gears, levers, and typographical characters. Combining Constructivism and Dadaism, he imbues controlled geometric forms with a playful, improvised quality.
Fascinated with the fusion of art and technology, he and his Bauhaus cohorts considered the machine to be a positive instrument for society. An instrument in need of well-considered design at both the industrial and product levels.
Moholy-Nagy apparently considered himself, as an artist, to be primarily a photographer. He said “photography could create a whole new way of seeing the outside world that the human eye could not,” and “it is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be illiterate of the future.”
He experimented with a light-sensitive photo technique, the photogram, in the early twenties. Placing objects on light sensitive paper and exposing the paper to light; the objects on the paper keep the paper from being exposed, and reveal a shape. This experimentation was concerned with the interplay between light, dark, and the two-dimensional paper, creating depth and motion.
Moholy-Nagy’s legacy of surrealism is evident in his photomontages featuring human and animal figures in strange formations, and his black and white Bauhaus balcony photos.
He founded the Chicago Institute of Design in 1938, bringing Bauhaus methodologies to the USA. These methodologies are the modern day Basic Design course that have become some of the key foundational courses offered in architectural and design schools all over the world.
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007/foto/fullscreen/fig_3.shtm
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425308900/116447/landscape.html
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20532
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