A sculptor, photographer, film maker and graphic designer, László Moholy-Nagy experimented with many different artistic genres. He was one of the most prominent Modernist theorists and gained a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic as a teacher and writer. Born in Hungary, he served in the First World War as a young man before participating in the country’s radical political and artistic movements. At the age of 24 he moved to Germany, involving himself in Berlin’s Dada and Constructivist avant-garde, and later joining the Bauhaus where he was an important figure for much of the 1920s. It was here that he earned an international standing, writing alongside Walter Gropius as well as producing his own work. By the mid 1930s the rise of Nazis forced him to leave the freelance design practice he had established in Germany. He then worked in Amsterdam and London before moving to America to head the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. He died in Chicago in 1946, having become a US citizen.