Lucia Moholy British, b. Austria-Hungary, 1894-1989
Lucia Moholy, born Lucia Schulz in Karlin, studied art history and philosophy at nearby Prague University, then worked in Berlin as an editor for several publishing houses and as a theater and art critic (1915-20). She and artist László Moholy-Nagy met in 1920 and married the following year. In 1922 they began experimenting with photograms (cameraless photography) and a year later moved to Weimar when Moholy-Nagy joined the faculty of the Bauhaus.
Moholy served as an apprentice photographer at the Eckner Studio in Weimar (1923-24) and studied photography and printing techniques at the Akademie für Graphische Kunst und Buchgewerbe, Leipzig (1925-26). When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, she photographed the new campus for publicity purposes and for the Bauhaus Books series she edited with Walter Gropius and Moholy-Nagy. She also made portraits of other Bauhaus teachers and friends. During these years Moholy and her husband continued their experiments with various photographic techniques, including photograms, photocollage, photomontage, and unusual camera viewpoints and angles. They left the Bauhaus in 1928 following Gropius's resignation, moving back to Berlin where Moholy photographed the stage designs created by Moholy-Nagy as a freelance designer. The next year she exhibited her work in the Film und Foto show in Stuttgart and also helped to curate the exhibition's historical section.
Separating from her husband in 1932, Moholy left Berlin for Paris and after her divorce in 1934 settled in London and opened a portrait studio. She taught photography at the London School of Printing and Graphic Art as well as at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1935), published a history of photography, A Hundred Years of Photography (1939), and worked for unesco on photographic projects in the Near and Middle East (1946). In 1959 Moholy moved to Switzerland, where she died 30 years later. M.M.