ABSTRACT
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whose work is currently the subject of a large retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, is an artist who somehow resists the normal categories of criticism almost a quarter of a century after his death. In the exhibition which Jan van der Marck has brought to Chicago, the largest section is devoted to Moholy's paintings—sixty-nine works, dating from 1919 to 1946, the year of the artist's death. Certain of these paintings, particularly those of the early twenties, must be counted among Moholy's finest accomplishments. A great deal that Moholy first proposed our schools have long since disposed as their standard fare. As Sibyl Moholy-Nagy observes in her essay for the catalogue of this exhibition: "The ubiquitous Basic Design courses of today have totally absorbed Froebel's Gifts, Van Doesburg's didactic transformation of a cow, and the Bauhaus Grundlehre."
