Framed photogram. Signed Moholy Nagy on the lower left corner and verso. Illegibly stamped on verso. 23 x 17 cm (9.1 x 6.7 inches). PROVENANCE: Private collection (Central Europe)

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946, Hungarian) was a Hungarian artist best known for his experimental use of photography. Influenced by the work of Constructivist artists like Alexander Rodchenko, Moholy-Nagy’s Photograms are characteristic examples of his unorthodox approach. By placing objects onto photo-sensitive paper and exposing it to light, he created residual impressions that are a conceptual hybrid of photography and sculpture. “The magic possibility of framing a certain space and time is what brought me to photography,” he once explained. “This process of recording elements of three dimensions in the flow of time, and fixing them in a two-dimensional image, creates a new context for the elements of the photograph.” Born László Weisz on July 20, 1895 in Bácsborsód, Hungary, he changed his name due to its German Jewish origins. After serving in World War I, he studied at the private school of the Hungarian painter Róbert Berény. As a professor at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, he was also proficient in typography, painting, sculpture, design, and printmaking. Forced to flee Germany in 1935, due to the rise of the Nazi regime, he moved to Chicago in 1937 at the invitation of the industrialist Walter Paepcke to found a New Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy died on November 24, 1946 in Chicago, IL. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.

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American, 19th century : This work was executed by an unknown hand, and can only be identified by origin (i.e., region, period).