László Moholy-Nagy

ferrotyped, mounted on Hi-Art illustration board, signed and dated ‘1928’ in pencil and inscribed and dated ‘to Franz 45’ in ink on the mount, title and date in pencil on the reverse, 1928, probably printed circa 1941

The photographer to Franz Altschuler, 1945

William L. Schaeffer Photographs, Chester, Connecticut, 1994

László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago, 1947), fig. 226

Sybil Moholy-Nagy, Experiment in Totality (MIT Press, 1969), p. 73

Andreas Haus, Moholy-Nagy: Photographs and Photograms (New York, 1980), pl. 40

Krisztina Passuth, Moholy-Nagy (New York, 1985), p. 79

László Moholy-Nagy: Frühe Photographien, from Das Foto Taschenbuch series, Number 16 (Berlin, 1989), pl. 63

Ingrid Pfeiffer and Max Hollein, László Moholy-Nagy: Retrospective (Munich, 2009), p. 51

László Moholy-Nagy: Photographies, Photomontages, Photogrammes (Photo Poche, 1998), pl. 43

László Moholy-Nagy: A Life in Motion (Annely Juda Fine Art, 2004), fig. 15

Van Deren Coke, Avant-Garde Photography in Germany 1919-1939 (Munich, 1982), pl. 38

Mike Weaver, ed., The Art of Photography, 1839-1989 (Yale University Press, 1989), pl. 236

Richard Bolton, ed., The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (MIT Press, 1992), p. 92

Peter Baki, Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2011), pl. 69

This photograph is printed on paper with a very glossy surface. It may, in fact, be ferrotyped. The print shows the full range of tones, from deep black to crisp white, and delivers a great deal of detail throughout. It is in essentially excellent condition, with only a few issues that bear mentioning. When the photograph is examined closely in raking light, a few minor indentations can be seen in the glossy surface. Age-appropriate silvering is also visible in the dark areas. The mount is somewhat age-darkened and soiled. On the reverse are numerous abrasions to the top paper ply, as well as the remnants of paper-tape hinges.
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The image offered here is the most famous of a series of photographs Moholy-Nagy took from the new Berlin radio tower, the Funkturm, erected in 1926.   Moholy appears to have photographed from the height of the tower for a period of nearly two years, from 1926 to 1928.  The present image is one of a number of pictures made during the winter of 1928, in which snow transforms the landscape and buildings below into an abstraction.  

Moholy’s use of the high vantage point was among several strategies he employed to ‘unlock’ a picture space that could seem ordinary when viewed from the perspective of eye level.   From the dizzying top of the radio tower, however, as in the present image, the individual walkways—some cleared of snow, others not—spin off like revolving spokes from a circle in the center; the trees and shrubs become a study in pointillism; and the rooftops and windows of nearby buildings, a series of overlapping, geometric shapes.  Beaumont Newhall, who had purchased Moholy’s entire show at the Delphic Studio Galleries in 1939, chose this image for Sixty Photographs, the inaugural exhibition of the Department of Photographs at The Museum of Modern Art, in 1940-41.

In 1941, following the Sixty Photographs exhibition, the Museum sponsored a show to promote the collecting of photographs, entitled American Photographs at $10.  Nine photographers, among them Moholy-Nagy, submitted one image each to the exhibition, and agreed to print the image in an edition of 10, at a price of $10, as the works were sold.  Few, however, were ultimately purchased.  Moholy’s contribution to this show was the ‘From the Radio Tower, Berlin,’ and it is believed that the print offered here is likely from that generation of prints, made around 1941.

The present print is inscribed by Moholy on the mount, ‘to Franz,’ his Institute of Design student Franz Altschuler (1923–2009).  Suffering from leukemia in the mid-1940s, Moholy required frequent blood transfusions, and the German-born Altschuler, a blood-type match, generously gave blood for Moholy’s treatment.   In 1945, in gratitude, Moholy presented him with this personally-inscribed print of one of his most important images.  Altschuler later went on to teach at the I.D. himself and became a successful artist and prolific commercial illustrator.