Sibyl moholy nagy biography examples
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy
German-American art historian
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy | |
|---|---|
Moholy-Nagy as an actress | |
| Born | Sibylle Pietzsch (1903-10-29)October 29, 1903 Dresden, Germany |
| Died | January 8, 1971(1971-01-08) (aged 67) New York City, US |
| Nationality | German, American |
| Occupation(s) | Professor, architectural historian and critic |
| Employer | Pratt Institute (1951-1969) |
| Spouses | Carl Dreyfuss (m. 1929, divorced)László Moholy-Nagy (m. 1935; died 1946) |
| Children | 2 |
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (born Dorothea Maria Pauline Alice Sybille Pietzsch; October 29, 1903 – January 8, 1971) was an architectural and art historian. Originally a German citizen, she accompanied her second husband, the Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, in his move to the United States. She was the author of a study of his work, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, plus several other books on architectural history.
She was an outspoken critic of what she regarded as the excesses of postwar modernist architecture. After her death in 1971, fellow writer Reyner Banham eulogized her as "the most formidable of the group of lady-critics (Jane Jacobs, Ada Louise Huxtable, etc) who kept the U.S. architectural establishment continually on the run during the 50s and 60s".
Biography
Sibylle Pietzsch was born in Dresden on October 29, 1903 to architect Martin Pietzsch (Deutscher Werkbund) and Fanny (Clauss) Pietzsch. Her father also headed the Dresden Academy.
Moholy-Nagy was an intelligent and rebellious girl who did well in school but suffered from extreme anxiety. As the youngest daughter in a family of four, her parents believed in a privileged Bilden education, prioritizing a humanitarian focus on classics, an idea popular among Dresden bourgeois. Her deepest d 1Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (1903-1971), the subject of the first book in a new series edited by Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye, aptly fits their brief of expanding our understanding of the modern movement by looking beyond the figures they term “grandmasters,” while retaining a focus on biography. The widow of the Bauhaus master Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the subject of her first major work of non-fiction, Moholy-Nagy never embraced what became known as postmodernism. As Hilde Heynen demonstrates in Sibyl Moholy-Nagy : Architecture, Modernism and its Discontents, she was nonetheless a challenger of modernist orthodoxy who proved equally talented at provoking powerful men and inspiring ambitious students. 2Whether or not she was a “grandmistress,” there is no doubt that Moholy-Nagy led an interesting life. The daughter of the prominent Dresden architect Martin Pietzsch, she had a brief career as an actress, during which, in the first of many self-inventions, she anglicized her maiden name to Peech. She left her philandering first husband, a good friend of Theodor Adorno, after his money began to run out. She subsequently became involved with Moholy-Nagy, whom she married in 1935. In 1936 the family emigrated to Chicago, where until her husband’s death in 1946, she played a secondary, if supportive role, in helping him establish first the New Bauhaus and then the Institute of Design. 3Widowed at the age of forty-three, with two young daughters to support in a country in which she had lived for only a decade, Moholy-Nagy at first attempted to continue to play a role at the Institute of Design. This failed when she proved unable to work with Serge Chermayeff, her husband’s successor as director of the Institute. It is not easy in retrospect to determine to what degree Moholy-Nagy’s reputation as a difficult woman (a “killjoy”, to use the term Sara Ahmed employs in Living a Feminist Life)1 was the product of the misogyny of the time, which has by no means vanished i LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY: A talk by Hattula Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy came of age during the First World War and launched himself as an artist during the post-War period of cultural ferment that enveloped the Western world. After the Great War finally ended, modernist trends in many fields, whose development the War had stifled, could now flower, and Moholy-Nagy became an active participant in several of them, gradually positioning himself on the cutting edge of art, photography, commercial design, stage and film, and design education. His career path, his artistic production, as well as his personal life, were strongly influenced by large-scale cultural trends and historical events. He was very much a product of the turbulent history of the first half of the 20th century, a period of time that continues to be a subject of deep interest today. For example, the year 2009 was being celebrated in parts of Europe and the United States as the Bauhaus Year. “The spotlight that shines upon the Bauhaus also shines upon him” The Bauhaus, Germany’s most famous design school, was founded in Weimar by Walter Gropius in 1919. The widespread and long-lasting influence of the Bauhaus on modern design and design education is impressive, especially because it existed for only 14 years. Moholy-Nagy was appointed a master, or teacher, at the Bauhaus in 1923 and became one of the most enthusiastic proponents of its educational aims and methods. The spotlight that shines upon the Bauhaus also shines upon him. So, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to give you some details about the life and career of László Moholy-Nagy, a modern artist of the twentieth century, which – for many of us – was also our century. László was born in 1895 in Borsód, now called Bácsborsód, a two-street village in southern Hungary. His father managed a large estate and the house the family lived in—and where he was born--came with the job. My Hungarian famil Common Threads — Approaches to Paul Klee’s Carpet of 1927 Sarah McGavran Paul Klee’s Carpet, 1927, creates a conundrum for scholars as it does not neatly fit the existing theoretical models concerning how European artists engage with non-Western art and culture, while at the same time opening up exciting new avenues for inquiry. → more Jun. 10 2018 Paul Klees bildnerische Webarchitekturen Fabienne Eggelhöfer Für die Entwicklung seiner abstrakten Bildsprache und seines Bauhaus-Unterrichtes bediente sich Paul Klee unterschiedlicher Quellen, die er im Alltag, auf seinen Reisen oder in Büchern entdeckte. Das Studium nicht-europäischen Designs von Gebäuden und Stoffen, die Fantasiearchitektur der aus Tunesien mitgebrachten Aquarelle oder die auf Papier entworfenen Stoffmuster der Weberinnen bildeten die Grundlage für Werke wie Teppich, 1927, 48. → more Apr. 8 2019 Weltkunstbücher der 1920er-Jahre — Zur Ambivalenz eines publizistischen Aufbruchs Susanne Leeb Um 1900 erschienen die ersten Kompendien und Handbücher über sogenannte Weltkunst. Nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg explodierte dann die Anzahl der Publikationen über außereuropäische Künste. Diese fanden auch sogleich Eingang in die 1919 neu etablierte Bauhaus-Bibliothek. Diese Buchreihen lassen erkennen, unter welchen Bedingungen nichteuropäische Kunst in den 1920er-Jahren rezipiert wurde: als Inspirationsmaterial, als Ausdruck der Kanonkritik an einer europäischen Hochkunst und als Plädoyer für die Aufhebung zwischen Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, aber vor allem auch welches Verständnis von „Welt“ hier reproduziert wurde. → more Sep. 13 2019 Dry Time — Anni Albers Weaving the Threads of the Past Maria Stavrinaki When the Bauhaus was formed it was meant to be the reversed image of contemporary history and society. If the outside world was a field where opposing forces, in the form of class and n Browse
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST