prepared to demonstrate his curriculum was in the
form of a chart fashioned of concentric circles. It
outlined a five-year program of study, with general
first-year courses on the outermost layer. ‘‘Light,
Photography, Film, and Publicity’’ are grouped to-
gether in one block in the third year of study, after
students have completed its prerequisite, ‘‘Science.’’
In short order, Moholy appointed a faculty, drawing
on his former Bauhaus associates, including Hin
Bredendieck, who had been one of his students,
and Gyorgy Kepes, who was to teach the Light
Workshop, as the photography department was
initially known. Early students in the Light Work-
shop, including Nathan Lerner and Arthur Siegel,
eventually became photography instructors at the
New Bauhaus as well.
Moholy’s teaching method, so admired by his
students and associates, largely bewildered the
industrialists funding the school. They complained
of seeing strange and inexplicable models and
objects (surely Light-Space Modulators) lying
about the school’s classrooms and were distressed
by the collegial nature of the instruction, which
promoted collaboration and interaction between
instructor and student and the students themselves.
After only a year, the school’s governing board, the
Association of Arts and Industries, attempted to
fire Moholy on the grounds he lacked ‘‘teaching
experience,’’ among other flaws. When faced with
overwhelming support for Moholy from his stu-
dents and faculty, the AAI board, claiming finan-
cial difficulties as a continuing effect of the Great
Depression, closed the school, in spite of Moholy’s
five-year contract. It was this contract which in fact
brought into being the School of Design. Moholy
successfully sued the AAI and immediately set up a
new school in an abandoned bakery on Chicago’s
near north side. Classes at the School of Design
commenced in February of 1939. Moholy had
taken a position as a designer for the Parker Pen
Company as well as for Spiegel’s mail order depart-
ment store, and he plowed some of his earnings
back into the school. He had also found an enlight-
ened patron, Walter C. Paepcke, the executive who
ran the progressive Container Corporation. Under
Paepcke’s patronage, Moholy was finally able to
realize the school he had envisioned. He appointed
a Board of Advisors that included New York cura-
tor Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, ed-
ucator John Dewey of the University of Chicago,
and his friends Walter Gropius, and Julian Huxley,
among others. In 1944, the name of the school was
changed to the Institute of Design.
In his own work, during the Chicago years,
Moholy-Nagy worked extensively with a Leica
camera, including experimenting with color slide
photography. At the Institute of Design, he worked
with students to help with the war effort, including
designing camouflage.
Diagnosed with leukemia in 1945, Moholy
returned to his first love, painting, creating among
other works, a series of abstract canvases titled
Leukafter the disease that would kill him in the
fall of 1946. His widow, Sybil Moholy-Nagy, pulled
together his many various writings into a posthu-
mously published book,Vision in Motion. Moholy-
Nagy’s legacy lived on, however, at the Institute of
Design, which thrived, attracting such teachers as
Harry Callahan (whom Moholy hired just a few
months before his death) and Aaron Siskind, and
graduating such talents as Kenneth Josephson, Art
Sinsabaugh, and Barbara Crane. The International
Museum of Photography and Film, George East-
man House, Rochester, New York has an in-depth
collection of Moholy’s photographic works, from
the private collection of his widow. Moholy-
Nagy,’s daughter, Hattula, has continued to pro-
mote Moholy-Nagy’s work. Materials are archived
primarily in the Archives of the Illinois Institute of
Technology (which subsumed ID in 1949), which
hold original manuscripts documenting the early
years of the Institute of Design and at the Bau-
haus-Archiv in Berlin.
LynneWarren
Seealso:Bauhaus; Feininger, Andreas; History of
Photography: Interwar Years; History of Photogra-
phy: Twentieth-Century Pioneers; Institute of
Design; Peterhans, Walter; Photography in Ger-
many and AustriaBiography
Born, Borso ́d (present-day Ba ́csborso ́d), Mohol Puszta,
Hungary, 20 July 1895. Drafted into Austro-Hungarian
Army and sent to Russian front, 1914. Wounded and
recuperated in Odessa, Russia, military hospital, 1914,
Galicia, Italy, 1917; discharged and returned to study of
law, at the Royal University in Budapest. Co-founder
MAgroup of avant-garde artists, 1917. Left university
and Hungary, 1918. Briefly stayed in Vienna, then Dus-
seldorf, then resided in Berlin, 1920. Married to Lucia
Schulz, 1921. Invited by Walter Gropius to head up Metal
Workshop and Foundation Course at Weimar Bauhaus,
1923; publishedMalerei, Fotographie, Film, 1925. Moved
to Dessau when Bauhaus relocated, 1925. Left Bauhaus in- Experimented with camera-less photography, Con-
structivist principles. Moved to Berlin, worked as stage
and set designer, and operated commercial design studio,
1928–1934. Built first ‘‘Light-Space Modulator,’’ 1930.
Married Sybil Pietzsch, 1931. Fled Nazi Germany, 1934
to Amsterdam, then London, 1935. Documentary photo-
graphy and films, commercial work, 1935–1937. Invited
MOHOLY-NAGY, LA ́SZLO ́