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Moholy-Nagy was born in Borsod, now known as Bácsborsód in Southern Hungary, in July 1888. He studied law in Budapest in 1913, when he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army to serve as an artillery officer on the Italian and Russian fronts. While serving at artillery observation posts, Moholy-Nagy was able to execute numerous drawings, recording his traumatic war experience, on the reverse of military-issued postcards which he could easily carry with him. In 1917, he was seriously wounded and hospitalized. The following year, he abandoned his plans to become a lawyer in favour of a career as an artist, with the encouragement of his friend, the art critic Iván Hevesy. The three following lots (547, 548 & 549) are rare works by the 23 year-old Moholy-Nagy. Though figurative they reveal Moholy-Nagy's powerful Expressionist lines. In his autobiography of 1944, Abstract of an Artist, Moholy-Nagy explained his early figurative style, writing that contemporary art in those days was too chaotic and that and all the '-isms' were incomprehensible and puzzling to him. He was, however, experimenting with Dadaist compositions already in 1919 and then moved to Vienna and later to Berlin, where he would soon make his first works in his Constructivist style of the early 1920s. PROPERTY FROM AN ENGLISH ESTATE

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)

Portrait of a couple

Details

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)
Portrait of a couple
signed 'Moholy-Nagy' (upper right)
black and brown wax crayon on paper
14 7/8 x 20 3/8 in. (37.8 x 51.7 cm.)
Executed circa 1920

Provenance

Acquired by the father of the present owner in the 1980s.

Literature

K. Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, London, 1985, no. 19 (illustrated; titled 'Composition with figures').

Exhibited

Delaware, University Gallery, László Moholy-Nagy: From Budapest to Berlin 1914-1923, September - April 1996.

Special Notice

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