László Moholy-Nagy, born in 1895 in Borsód, Austria-Hungary, believed in the potential of art as a vehicle for social transformation, working hand in hand with technology for the betterment of humanity. A multifaceted artist, educator, and prolific writer, Moholy-Nagy experimented across mediums, moving fluidly between the fine and applied arts, pursuing his quest to illuminate the interrelatedness of life, art, and technology. Among his radical innovations were his experiments with cameraless photographs (which he dubbed “photograms”); unconventional use of industrial materials in painting and sculpture; experiments with light, transparency, space, and motion across mediums; and his work at the forefront of abstraction. In 1915, Moholy-Nagy served as an artillery officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, during which time he made sketches and watercolors. After his discharge in 1918, he attended art classes and studied the old masters, particularly Rembrandt, as well as works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and practitioners of Cubism and Futurism. He came into close contact with Magyar Aktivizmus (Hungarian Activism), the influential avant-garde artistic and anti-military movement. Moholy-Nagy settled in Berlin in spring 1920, where he met his future wife, the photographer Lucia Schulz. He also met there the Dada artists whose works had already influenced his own, as well as the Constructivists. He began to paint abstract canvases, in which geometric shapes and bands of color form disembodied architectural structures in space. In 1922, he participated in his first exhibition at the avant-garde gallery Der Sturm in Berlin, which included works made of industrial materials. He also began to experiment with photograms at this time. From 1923 to 1928, Moholy-Nagy taught at the Bauhaus school of art in Weimar and Dessau, pioneered the Bauhaus Books series with Walter Gropius, and collaborated with designer Herbert Bayer on typography for Bauhaus materials. He continued to paint, published lithographs, and made photomontages, collecting materials from magazines and newspapers and reassembling them in surprising combinations. Photography took on an increasingly important role for him as he embraced his “new vision,” a means of expressive power through photographs taken from unconventional perspectives. In 1930, he met artist Hilla Rebay, Solomon R. Guggenheim’s advisor, who collected his work in depth for Guggenheim’s collection of abstract and nonobjective art. In 1930, Moholy-Nagy created his film Light Play: Black-White-Gray, which showcased his kinetic light display Light Prop for an Electric Stage (1930). In Berlin, where he had resettled in 1928 after having left the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy turned to more commercial artistic pursuits, including advertising design, typography, and stage design. In winter 1931, he met writer Sibyl Pietzsch, who became his second wife. In 1934, because of the Nazi rise to power, Moholy-Nagy left Berlin for Amsterdam; he collaborated there with De Stijl artists and architects, experimented with color photography, and exhibited and lectured frequently. In July 1937, Moholy-Nagy sailed to Chicago at the invitation of the Association of Arts and Industries to be the director of the New Bauhaus: American School of Design (subsequently reopened as the School of Design in 1939 and later renamed the Institute of Design, which today is part of the Illinois Institute of Technology). Alongside his demanding work as an administrator, Moholy-Nagy continued to pursue his artistic practices in various mediums and exhibited widely. He was especially intrigued by the transparent properties of Plexiglas, with which he made his Space Modulators, hand-molded hybrids of painting and sculpture that cast shadow effects. Moholy-Nagy always sought out new materials and methods in the steadfast belief that the assimilation of art, technology, and education could be an essential tool for communication and the dissemination of information. His body of work exemplifies his commitment to the Gesamtwerk, or the total work, which he sought throughout his lifetime. Moholy-Nagy died from leukemia in 1946, in Chicago, at age fifty-one. His posthumous exhibitions include In Memoriam László Moholy-Nagy, The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, New York (1947); László Moholy-Nagy, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1969); László Moholy-Nagy,Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain (1991); Technical Detours: The Early Works of Moholy-Nagy Reconsidered, Art Gallery of the CUNY Graduate Center, New York (2006); Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Retrospektive, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2010); Moholy-Nagy: El arte de la Luz, Circulo de bellas artes, Madrid (2010); and Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016; travels to the Art Institute of Chicago [2016–17]; Los Angeles County Museum of Art [2017]).