Modernist's rarely seen works part of exhibition
Gallery offers insights into formative years of artist Moholy-Nagy
BY JESSICA SMITH
Staff Writer

Lszl Moholy-Nagy's "Landscape," circa 1918-19, is an oil on acidic composition board.

Those who enjoy the work of artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy will have the opportunity to see a painting that went undiscovered for 75 years, along with other rare works from his formative beginnings.

The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University is hosting an exhibition of the pivotal Modernist's early works, as well as the works of others who influenced him.

"The show describes his interconnections with artists, artists' groups and styles of the period, also even literary and philosophical influences. It's almost like his artistic milieu," said Jeffrey Wexler, senior curator at the museum.

The exhibition, "Technical Detours: The Early Work of Moholy-Nagy Reconsidered," opened this month and will run through Oct. 31 in the museum's Voorhees Special Exhibition Galleries. More than 200 pieces will be featured, including paintings, watercolors and book designs.

Perhaps most significant is the 1921 painting discovered on the back of the Hungarian artist's early International Constructivist painting "Architektur I" in 1997.

This Moholy-Nagy work, titled "Me," depicts the artist in a military uniform and was completed in 1917. It is graphite and pencil crayons on postcard.

Oliver A.I. Botar, organizer of the exhibit and an art history professor at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, had taken the painting out into the sun to have a better look at it when he discovered the hidden painting under a layer of whitewash. He contacted Carol Stringari, chief painting conservator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Stringari knew the whitewash could not be removed in the traditional manner without damaging the painting, so she slowly chipped away at it with a razor - a process that took years to complete.

The painting is on linen, and is from the artist's Dada period, an early 20th-century movement that ridiculed traditional art forms and social values. Botar speculated that Moholy-Nagy may have decided to do away with the painting when he moved away from Dadaism, or that perhaps he was simply in need of a painting surface.

Architektur I, circa 1922, is oil, metallic oil pigment and graphite on fine linen fabric.

While Moholy-Nagy adhered to the style of geometrical abstraction that he was widely known for during most of his career, he experimented with various styles in the early years.

The exhibition highlights the period from the end of World War I, when Moholy-Nagy finished the military service he recorded through his earliest sketches and drawings, to 1923. It also takes into account Moholy-Nagy's relationships with the creative minds of avant garde circles in Budapest, Vienna and Berlin.

After this period, Moholy-Nagy joined the prestigious school of Modernist art and design in Europe, the Bauhaus. There, he became known as one of the major influential teachers. When he died in 1946, he was considered a figurehead in the world of Modernist Art.

The Zimmerli has two ancillary programs planned, including a screening of Moholy-Nagy's experimental films at 7 p.m. Oct. 27; and a symposium titled "Detours of Technology: Insights into the Hungarian and Weimar German Oeuvres of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy" at 10 a.m. Oct. 28.

The museum is located at 71 Hamilton St. in New Brunswick. Admission is $3 for the general public, and free for children and Rutgers students, staff and faculty. For more information, call (732) 932-7237, ext. 610.