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(b Borsod [now Bácsborsod], 20 July 1895; d Chicago, 24 Nov. 1946). Hungarian-born painter, sculptor, experimental artist, and writer who became an American citizen in 1946, a few months before his death. After qualifying in law at Budapest University and serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, he moved to Vienna in 1919 and then in 1920 to Berlin, where he painted abstract pictures influenced by Lissitzky (himself newly arrived from Russia). He also experimented with collage and photomontage and in 1922 had his first one-man exhibition, at the Sturm Gallery. From 1923 to 1928 he taught at the Bauhaus, taking over from Itten the running of the preliminary course. The difference in approach between these two highly distinctive characters is summed up by Frank Whitford (Bauhaus, 1984): ‘Even Moholy's appearance proclaimed his artistic sympathies.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)


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