LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, the first comprehensive retrospective of the pioneering artist and educator László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) to be seen in the United States in nearly 50 years. Organized by LACMA, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago, this exhibition examines the rich and varied career of the Hungarian-born modernist. One of the most versatile figures of the twentieth-century avant-garde, Moholy (as he is often called) believed in the potential of art as a vehicle for social transformation and in the value of new technologies in harnessing that potential. He was a pathbreaking painter, photographer, sculptor, designer, and filmmaker as well as a prolific writer and an influential teacher in both Germany and the United States. Among his innovations were experiments with cameraless photography; the use of industrial materials in painting and sculpture; research with light, transparency, and movement; work at the forefront of abstraction; fluidity in moving between the fine and applied arts; and the conception of creative production as a multimedia endeavor. Radical for the time, these are now all firmly part of contemporary art practice.

The exhibition includes approximately 300 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, photographs, photograms, photomontages, films, and examples of graphic, exhibition, and theater design. A highlight is the full-scale realization of the Room of the Present, an immersive installation that is a hybrid of exhibition space and work of art, seen here for the first time in the United States. This work—which includes photographic reproductions, films, images of architectural and theater design, and examples of industrial design—was conceived by Moholy around 1930 but realized only in 2009.

Moholy-Nagy: Future Present is co-organized by Carol S. Eliel, Curator of Modern Art, LACMA; Karole P. B. Vail, Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and Matthew S. Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Department of Photography, Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition’s tour began at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, continued at the Art Institute of Chicago, and concludes at LACMA.

The LACMA exhibition is designed by the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee. The installation’s design reflects the transparency and dynamism of Moholy’s work, with a diagonal visual “cut” through the entire exhibition space. At the same time, details of the installation pay specific homage to Moholy’s vocabulary both in Germany (a black line running along the floorboards and around doorways) and in Chicago (organically shaped plinths and pedestals for the later sculptures). Moholy-Nagy is accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition catalogue, the most extensive English-language book on the artist to date.

“Moholy-Nagy is considered one of the earliest modern artists actively to engage with new materials and technologies. This spirit of experimentation connects to LACMA’s longstanding interest in and support of the relationship between art and technology, starting with its 1967–71 Art and Technology Program and continuing with the museum’s current Art + Technology Lab,” according to Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “This exhibition’s integrated view of Moholy’s work in numerous mediums reveals his relevance to contemporary art in our multi- and new media age.”

“Moholy’s goal throughout his life was to integrate art, technology, and education for the betterment of humanity; he believed art should serve a public purpose. These goals defined the artist’s utopian vision, a vision that remained as constant as his fascination with light, throughout the many material changes in his oeuvre,” comments Carol S. Eliel, exhibition curator. “Light was Moholy’s ‘dream medium,’ and his experimentation employed both light itself and a range of industrial materials that take advantage of light.”

Exhibition Highlights
The exhibition is installed chronologically with sections following Moholy’s career from his earliest days in Hungary through his time at the Bauhuas (1923–28), his post-Bauhaus period in Europe, and ending with his final years in Chicago (1937–46). Exhibition highlights include:

Photogram (1926): In the 1920s Moholy was among the first artists to make photograms by placing objects—including coins, lightbulbs, flowers, even his own hand—directly onto the surface of light-sensitive paper. He described the resulting images, simultaneously identifiable and elusive, as “a bridge leading to a new visual creation for which canvas, paintbrush, and pigment cannot serve.”

A 19 (1927): Moholy integrated his ongoing fascination with light, transparency, and motion into A 19. He created a sense of transparency in paintings such as this by using separately mixed, opaque colors rather than by layering the neighboring pigments. Geometric forms—circles and diagonals in particular—are leitmotifs in Moholy’s work.

Photograph (Berlin Radio Tower) (1928/29): Moholy used a traditional camera to take photos that often employ exaggerated angles and plunging perspectives to capture contemporary technological marvels such as the Berlin Radio Tower, which was completed in 1926. This photograph epitomizes Moholy’s concept of art working hand-inhand with technology to create new ways of seeing the world—his “new vision.”

The Room of the Present is an immersive installation featuring photographic reproductions, films, slides, posters, and examples of architecture, theater, and industrial design, including an exhibition copy of Moholy’s kinetic Light Prop for an Electric Stage (1930). The Room exemplifies Moholy’s desire to achieve a Gesamtwerk (total work) that would unify art and technology with life itself. A hybrid between exhibition space and work of art, it was originally conceived around 1930 but realized only in 2009, based on the few existing plans, drawings, and related correspondence Moholy left behind.

Vertical Black, Red, Blue (1945): This sculpture from LACMA’s collection demonstrates Moholy’s use of new industrial materials for his art, in this case Plexiglas that he incised, painted, and shaped. The work appears differently depending on how it is lit: frontal illumination makes prominent the paint colors named in the title, whereas backlighting causes them to recede, drawing out instead the intricate whorl of incisions in the plastic. Such changes are activated by the viewer, who, circling the work, can effectively see two pieces in one.