FOREWARD

The Institute of Design Chicago celebrates Bauhaus Zeitgeist the 100 year anniversary. A few selected students have designed a book to commemorate Moholy Nagy’s work, students are inspired by Moholy Nagy’s fearlessness to be creative in such a innovative way.

The core focus of the Bauhaus was forward thinking. In the early 1920s, Moholy-Nagy was persuaded by these artists’ belief that a revolutionary society demanded a radically new artistic language. He incorporated these ideas into his teaching at the Bauhaus, the influential German school of art, architecture, and design, founded in Weimar in 1919 whose curriculum embraced modern technology as integral to art. “A new unity of art and technology in the service of humanity.”. Moholy Nagy has a huge influenced at his period of the Bauhaus. He encouraged experimentation as a way to acquire direct knowledge of tools and materials, and to open up unexpected possibilities. Moholy embraced his work with characteristic enthusiasm and energy, his compositions are dynamic and reflect his verve and optimism. He developed his own individual style, which has a massive influence in design education today.

He was able to create so many styles among his work because of the way he viewed art. “Moholy was one of the earliest to create art with purely mechanical means.” Some at this time thought Moholy Nagy was creating art even Walter Gropuis as he describes Lasazlo’ work as “The arrogant distinction between the craftsman and the artist”. MoholyNagy emphasized the role of the modern artist as a producer of concepts rather than a craftsman physically involved in the making of the work. Moholy Nagy was able to blur the lines and still create work effortlessly.

We have selected the most interesting pieces on Mohly Nagy’s, that inspires us as students to push ourselves to the boundaries while maintaining the creativity to balance us. Moholy Nagy was revolutionary as he was dissolving the difference between fine art and engineering. His work was so powerful that it even shifted the Bauhaus towards thinking technology will benefit art. The Institute of Design have been influenced greatly by Moholy Nagy and the Bauhaus and will continue to be.

“in his teaching, which emphasized the visual character of each material in the design process, he influenced the development of the Bauhaus as from 1923 towards a modern lanauage of form. In founding the ‘new bauhaus’ he sought to perpetuate the Bauhaus philosophy in the USA.”