SCHOOL OF DESIGN IN CHICAGO
L. Moholy-Nagy [Director]
László Moholy-Nagy [Director]: SCHOOL OF DESIGN IN CHICAGO. Chicago: School of Design, [1940]. Slim quarto. Photo illustrated stapled self wrappers. 28 pp. Course catalog fully illustrated and featuring elaborate graphic design throughout by Moholy-Nagy and George [György] Kepes. Wrappers well worn and nearly detached at spine. Textblock well thumbed and rear panel rubbed. Fingernail sized scrape to front panel featuring Vergrösserungsläser und Zirkel [1940] by György Kepes. A good copy of a rare document.
9 x 12 beautifully realized 28-page course catalog of educational opportunities under the Directorship of László Moholy-Nagy at the School of Design, 247 East Ontario Street, Chicago, Illinois. Includes excerpted essays by Walter Gropius, L. Moholy-Nagy, George Fred Keck, George [György] Kepes, Robert Jay Wolf, and Charles W. Morris. Features uncredited faculty and student work from the short-lived New Bauhaus.
Faculty listed in this catalog: Dr. A. A. Sayvetz, George Fred Keck [assisted By Jan J. Reiner and Robert Bruce Tague], Robert J. Wolf [assisted by Danile Massen and L. Terebesy], George [György] Kepes [assisted by James H. Brown, N. B. Lerner and Frank R. Levstik, Jr.], Mrs. Marli Ehrman, Hubert Leckie, L. Moholy-Nagy [assisted by Eugene Bielawski, James Prestini and Charles W. Niedringhaus], Gordon Webber [assisted By Juliet Kepes], Mrs. Ester Perez De King. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, David Dushkin [Assisted By Miss Patricia Berkson].
The ever important Sponsor Committee consisted of William Bachrach, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., John Dewey, Walter Gropius, Jospeh Hudnut, Julian Huxley, and W. W. Norton.
The first half of the catalog features an introduction, description of the Preliminary Course, then breakdowns for years two through six, Evening Classes, Objectives essays, Faculty, Literature, and Information.
The second half of the catalog is a visual tour-de-force featuring photography, photograms, drawings, photocollage and industrial design product shots carefully assembled and dynamically presented in large format 2-page spreads that fully displayed the influences of European Avant-Garde page design.
In 1937 former Bauhaus Master László Moholy-Nagy [Hungarian, 1895 – 1946] accepted the invitation of a group of Midwest business leaders to set up an Industrial Design school in Chicago. The New Bauhaus opened in the Fall of 1937 financed by the Association of Arts and Industries as a recreation of the Bauhaus curriculum with its workshops and holistic vision in the United States.
The work of the Bauhaus would be too limited if this preliminary course served only Bauhaus students; they, through constant contact with instructors and practical workshop experience, are least in need of its record in book form. More important — one might say that the essential for the success of the Bauhaus idea is the education of our contemporaries outside of the Bauhaus. It is the public which must understand and aid in furthering the work of designers coming from the Bauhaus if their creativeness is to yield the best results for the community.
Moholy-Nagy drew on several émigrés affiliated with the former Bauhaus to fill the ranks of the faculty, including György Kepes and Marli Ehrman. The school struggled with financial issues and insufficient enrollment and survived only with the aid from grants of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations as well as from donations from numerous Chicago businesses. The New Bauhaus was renamed the Institute of Design in 1944 and the school finally merged with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1949.
In Chicago Moholy aimed at liberating the creative potential of his students through disciplined experimentation with materials, techniques, and forms. The focus on natural and human sciences was increased, and photography grew to play a more prominent role at the school in Chicago than it had done in Germany. Training in mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in Germany. Emerging from the basic course, various workshops were installed, such as "light, photography, film, publicity,” "textile, weaving, fashion,” "wood, metal, plastics,” "color, painting, decorating" and "architecture.” The most important achievement at the Chicago Bauhaus was probably in photography, under the guidance of teachers such as György Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegel or Harry Callahan.
Moholy-Nagy served as Director of the New Bauhaus in its various permutations until his death in 1946.
György Kepes [Hungarian, 1906 - 2001] worked with Moholy first in Berlin and then in London before emigrating to the United States in 1937. Kepes was invited by Moholy to run the Color and Light Department at the New Bauhaus and later at the Institute of Design, where he taught until 1943. During his years in Chicago Kepes signed his work ‘George,’ the Anglicized version of György.