Painter, photographer, philosopher of new aesthetics, filmmaker, builder of light-space machines, and teacher, Moholy-Nagy was born in Hungary. "A prolific writer, as well as one of the most fertile experimental artists of his time, he believed that art offered a way to reorder society after the traumatic years of World War I, and he looked especially to technology to pave the way."

Early paintings by Moholy-Nagy reflected his interest in German Expressionist painting. In the early 1920s, he met Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee, and explored Dadaism. It was his contact with Russian Constructivism, though, that fueled both the style his art would take and his ideas about art's role as a vehicle for social change. He believed that since ...