The New Bauhaus: Doc Reassesses the Career of Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was as great an artist as Picasso, and as much a visionary as Buckminster Fuller. At least this is what the film-makers behind The New Bauhaus want you to believe. The recently released documentary makes an attempt at not just casting Hungarian-born Moholy-Nagy as a great artist (this, is already widely acknowledged) but as one of the primary influencers of the art and design of the 20th Century.

It’s not entirely a controversial premise. His influence on fine art and industrial design are indisputable. But the film-makers argue that his greatest impact was in his process, not in his results. As the founder of a school: The New Bauhaus school in Chicago, USA, Moholy-Nagy was as much a purveyor of thought and ideas as he was a fine artist.

Born László Weisz in 1895 in the Hungarian town of Bácsborsód, Moholy-Nagy was of Jewish decent. He would later take the family name of his uncle, Nagy, and add the name Moholy to honour the town of Mohol (in present day Serbia) where he spent childhood summers. A soldier who dabbled in drawing, Moholy-Nagy moved first to Vienna, then to Berlin to expand his horizons beyond Hungary. He found quick success, and before long was teaching at the famous Bauhaus School in the Weimar Republic. During this fecund period, he became proficient at photography, typography, sculpture, painting, printmaking, film-making, and industrial design.

But his true genius was revealed when he was brought to Chicago in 1937 to head the New Bauhaus School. Though short-lived, his work there and at subsequent art schools in the States would leave an indelible mark on industrial design. For instance, we can credit the iconic bear-shaped honey jar to Moholy-Nagy’s schools, and the trademark shape of a bar of Dove soap. All the while, his photograms and other artistic works were widely shown and sought after by collectors.

Buried in Chicago, Moholy-Nagy died young, succumbing to leukemia in 1945. As Art News sums up the The New Bauhaus’ premise: “Yet as The New Bauhaus argues, the less visible aspects of Moholy-Nagy’s influence—the people he touched and the artists he fostered—are what make him important. He would have likely agreed with this documentary’s stance. As he once said, “I do not believe in art so much as mankind. Man reveals himself. Much of it is art.”

The New Bauhaus is available on various streaming sites, but the trailer is available here:

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