Lucia Moholy

Lucia Moholy, née Schulz, was born in Prague on 18 January 1894. After studying art history and philosophy, she began working as an editor and proofreader at various publishing houses in Germany in 1915. In 1921 she married the artist László Moholy-Nagy. The couple experimented with photograms and wrote texts on the theory of photography. In 1923 Moholy-Nagy received a teaching position at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Lucia Moholy trained in Otto Eckner’s photography studio there, and she additionally attended photo and printing courses at Leipzig’s Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Trade. Between 1923 and 1928, Moholy photographed the Bauhaus: buildings, workshops, products, teachers and students. Her photos continue to shape the image of the school today. In 1928 the couple left the Bauhaus and moved to Berlin. They separated one year later. In 1930 Moholy became head of the photography class at the Itten-School in Berlin. At the same time, she started gathering material for a history of photography. In 1933 her partner, the communist politician Theodor Neubauer, was arrested by the Nazis and Moholy had to flee Berlin. By way of Prague, Vienna and Paris, she reached London, where she established herself as a portrait photographer. Her book “A Hundred Years of Photography” appeared in 1939 and became a bestseller. She began documenting British archival material on microfilm in 1941 and later worked for UNESCO. In 1959 Lucia Moholy moved to Zurich, where she worked as an author and art critic. She died there on 17 May 1989.