Hungarian painter, sculptor, photographer, designer, director, theorist and teacher who, later, would receive American nationality. Soon after having studied Law for a year in Budapest he enlisted for the First World War. In 1919, he moved to Berlin where an itinerant exhibition of his work was organised by the Sturm Gallery. In 1921, influenced by Dada ideas, Moholy-Nagy began a systematic study of the inter-relation between space, time mass and light. He constructed sculptures which stressed play of light, paint and patterns of transparent colours. In 1929, he established design studio in Berlin and was contracted to do layouts for magazines, exhibitions and theatrical events. In 1933, he moved to Amsterdam where he became art director of the periodical, International Textiles but, two years later, he was forced to go to London owing to professional and political problems, for two years. It was here that he joined Walter Gropius and became a member of the vanguard artistic circle which included Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, John Piper, John Grierson and Herbert Read. His best known commercial work is the Parker 51 of 1941. His personal interests, such as tubular structures, plastics, the atomic bomb and even leukaemia (the disease that caused his death) appeared as abstract themes in his paintings and sculptures. In his experiments with photography, he was a pioneer in the artistic use of light and laid the foundations for Kinetic Art.
