László Moholy-Nagy: Light Play
18 March – 5 June 2022
Fotografiska New York
281 Park Avenue South

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PRESS RELEASE

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS DROPBOX FOLDER OF IMAGE FILES

Conceived and organized in collaboration with the Moholy-Nagy estate, the first U.S. museum exhibition devoted to the photography and film practice of pioneering multidisciplinary artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) will debut at Fotografiska New York before traveling internationally. 

From formal experimentation to personal documentation, the 68 film-based works in the show (all from negatives originally created between 1922 and 1945) collectively illuminate a novel side of an artist whose institutional spotlight has historically centered on painting and design.

A few bodies of work represented in the exhibition are:

  • Photoplastics: Photomontages (photographs of collage-like compositions) that offer social commentary, finely oscillating between the dark and the cheeky, through the integration of found imagery. Created in the 1920s, the tone of these photomontages shows the lasting influence of Dada in his practice. Viewed as a set, these minimalist compositions generate an excess of meaning through just newspaper images, photos, and a few drawn lines.

  • Black-and-white photography: Moholy-Nagy utilized disorienting perspective to challenge the inherently realistic qualities of the medium. It is in these works (particularly those capturing urban plans and architecture) that his formal relationship with Bauhaus and other constructivist schools is most apparent.

  • Photograms: Made without a camera (rather, via direct light exposure to photosensitive paper), Moholy-Nagy’s photograms reveal objects, stencils, and body parts like hands and the artist’s own profile; these compositions fit less tidily into geometric theory, instead prioritizing his lifelong studies of light and shadow.

More information is in the above-linked press release, and a preview of works on view is below. See the Dropbox folder linked above to download high-resolution image files. Artwork information is in each image’s file title. Image reuse must pertain only to the exhibition, and must contain the following credit line: © Estate of László Moholy-Nagy / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York