Lucia Moholy

Lucia Moholy, born Lucia Schulz, (18 January 1894, Prague, Austria-Hungary — 17 May 1989, Zürich, Switzerland) was a photographer. Her photography documenting the architecture and products of the Bauhaus introduced their work to a post-World War Two audience. However, Moholy was seldom credited for her work, which was often attributed to László Moholy-Nagy or Walter Gropius.^[1] Moholy was the first wife of fellow artist and photographer László Moholy-Nagy.

Biography

After studying philosophy, philology, and art history, she worked as an editor and lecturer in Prague and, as of 1918, in Germany. She met the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy in 1920 in Berlin and married him on her 27th birthday in January 1921. From 1923 to 1924, Lucia studied photography in Leipzig, and when her husband secured a position as master at the Bauhaus, lived in Weimar and Dessau and produced many of the iconic images and portraits associated with that school. In 1928, she and her husband moved to Berlin where she worked at Johannes Itten’s school as a stage photographer and lecturer.

The couple separated in 1929 and when the National Socialist German Workers Party rose to power in 1933 both emigrated, separately, to London. There, she continued to photograph and teach, publishing a book, A Hundred Years of Photography, 1839-1939 (Harmondsworth, 1939) and directing a microfilm/reprography service based at the London Science Museum Library, for the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (Aslib).^[2] Immediately after the war she travelled to the Near and Middle East for projects for UNESCO. She retired in 1959 to Zollikon, Switzerland.

References

1. ↑ Williamson, Beth (April 2016). "Lucia Moholy, 'Bauhaus Building, Dessau' 1925–6". Tate. Retrieved 29 August 2016. 
2. ↑ Moholy, L. (1946), “The ASLIB microfilm service: the story of its wartime activities”, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 2 No.3, pp.147-73

External links

• Lucia Moholy's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art