Hoholy-Nagy In Motion…

Being the Obon holidays in Japan just last week, I got some time off to go on a little road trip to visit the relatives in Kyoto. Fortunately, we had some extra time which we spent trawling the galleries within vicinity. The Momak had a great retrospective exhibition of the constructivist multidisciplinary artist Moholy-Nagy. So we spent an afternoon out of the heat of summer indoors, with some experimental photography and geometric painting. It was exhaustive and intimate, and by the end of the show (which covered everything from his early drawings, set-design and light/movement contraptions, to his late and final paintings) we felt we got an insight into a very diverse and productive lifetime within the space of 2 hours. If you have the opportunity to visit the Momak, check it out. The accompanying essays and book are well worth a look too, and don’t forget to grab a copy of the fantastic free poster.

This is the first one-man exhibition in Japan introducing the entirety of the Hungarian-born artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), who is known as a constructivist and a teacher at the Bauhaus.
His wide-ranging activities including photography, design, film, kinetic art and art education were consistently in pursuit of “the new vision” brought about by “artistic use of light and movement” and therefore he is esteemed as a pioneer in media art.