This episode of bauhaus faces is about a photographer that most Bauhaus fans today know: Lucia Moholy. She was the photographer who delivered the photos of the Bauhaus in Dessau and its masters’ houses that made the art school so iconic. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that art historians became alert to her when her photos and negatives made their way into the Bauhaus-Archive in Berlin. Until then they had taken a long reroute from Germany via the US, while Lucia Moholy had thought they were lost, when in fact Bauhaus founder and first director Walter Gropius had taken them with him, denied their possession for decades and made use of them to promote the Bauhaus as the ultimate epitome of the avantgarde without ever mentioning their creator: Lucia Moholy.
But her life and work were so much more! When she was in danger of being arrested by the Nazis, Lucia left Germany and emigrated to London. Here, she worked as a portrait photographer and – as director – set up the microfilm archive ASLIB. She never succeeded in emigrating to the US like so many other Bauhauslers although she had an offer from her ex-husband László Moholy-Nagy to come and teach photography at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Most of her adult life, Lucia Moholy struggled to make ends meet and gain recognition for her achievements. When she – once more – emigrated to Switzerland in 1959 (she would live and die in Zollikon near Zurich) Lucia started writing about her collaborative work with László Moholy-Nagy and her own share in it.
For this episode the US art historian Robin Schuldenfrei helped to tell the story of Lucia Moholy. She has been researching Moholy for many years now.
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SHOW NOTES
www.bauhausfaces.com | @bauhausfaces
EXHIBITION „Lucia Moholy: Exposures“ at Kunsthalle Praha from 30th May until 28th October 2024 https://www.kunsthallepraha.org/en/events/lucia-moholy-exposures AND at Fotostiftung Winterthur in Spring 2025 https://fotostiftung.ch/en/
BOOKS BY LUCIA MOHOLY
„A Hundred Years of Photography“ (Lucia Moholy, 1939) https://www.amazon.de/Photography-1839-1939-Fotografie-Bauhäusler-Bauhaus-Archiv/dp/3922613586
„Marginalien zu Moholy-Nagy/Moholy-Nagy, Marginal Notes“ (Lucia Moholy, 1972)
ABOUT LUCIA MOHOLY
Lucia Moholy Bauhaus Fotografin (Rolf Sachsse, 1995)
„‚What I Could Lose‘: The Fate of Lucia“ (Meghan Forbes) Moholyhttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0055.102;view=text;rgn=main;xc=1;g=mqrg
Lucia Moholy. Im Schatten des Bauhaus (Jochen Stöckmann, 2022) https://www.weltkunst.de/ausstellungen/2022/09/lucia-moholy-fotografie-bauhaus?pagination=1&fullview
ABOUT LUCIA MOHOLY’S BOOKS AND NEGATIVES
„Multiple Frames for Lucia Moholy“ (Sabine Hartmann) https://youtu.be/aB5ioylqVuM?si=1ggYQUgMXe6FWHic
„Images in Exile: Lucia Moholy’s Bauhaus Negatives and the Construction of the Bauhaus Legacy“ (Robin Schuldenfrei) https://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Schuldenfrei_2013_Images_in_Exile_Lucia_Moholys_Bauhaus.pdf
„A Hundred Years of Photography 1839–1939“ (Burcu Dogramaci) https://archive.metromod.net/viewer.p/69/1470/object/5140-11251867
PHOTOS BY LUCIA MOHOLY IN ARCHIVESBauhaus photos
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin https://open-archive.bauhaus.de/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultDetailView/result.inline.moduleBottomContextFunctionBar1.bottomNavigator.back&sp=13&sp=Sartist&sp=SfilterDefinition&sp=0&sp=1&sp=1&sp=SdetailView&sp=93&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=T&sp=0&sp=SdetailList&sp=6&sp=0
Harvard Art Museums https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections
National Portrait Gallery https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp07323/lucia-moholy
Fotostiftung Winterthur, Switzerland https://fotostiftung.ch.zetcom.net/de/artists/artist/1395/
MoMA, New York https://www.moma.org/artists/6922
COVER PHOTO: László Moholy-Nagy, Portrait of Lucia Moholy, 1927, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
