Moholy, Lucia (1894–1989)

Czech photographer and filmmaker. Name variations: Lucia Moholy-Nagy. Born Lucia Schultz or Schulz in Karlin, Austria-Hungary, in 1894; died in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1989; graduated from Prague University, 1912; married László Moholy-Nagy (a photographer and artist), in 1921 (divorced).

Lucia Moholy was born Lucia Schultz in 1894 in Karlin, a small town near Prague in what is now the Czech Republic. She studied history and philosophy at Prague University, from which she graduated in 1912. Moholy worked as an editor for various publishers from 1915 to 1918, when she became an art and theater critic. She met the Hungarian-born photographer László Moholy-Nagy in 1920, married him the following year, and subsequently obtained Hungarian citizenship. When her husband became a member of the prestigious Bauhaus school of architecture, the couple moved to Weimar, Germany, where Moholy took a position as an apprentice in the Ecknar photographic studio from 1923 to 1924. The Moholys followed the Bauhaus school when it moved to Dessau, Germany, in 1925, and during that year and the next compiled a historic series of photographic portraits of the school's teachers and their associates. In 1929, Moholy left the Bauhaus to move to Berlin, where she made photographs of her husband's stage designs. The following year, she served as curator of the historical section of the Stuttgart Film und Foto exhibition.

Moholy separated from her husband in 1929 after he fell in love with the assistant who would later become his second wife, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy . After her divorce, she moved to Paris in 1933 and the following year to London, where she opened a photographic portrait studio. Moholy wrote a history of photography in 1939, and supplemented her income by freelancing for a variety of British publications. She became a British citizen in 1940. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) commissioned her to film the cultural heritage of the Near and Middle East in 1946, and she was named a member of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1948. Moholy moved to Switzerland in 1959 and died in Zurich in 1989.

sources:

Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. NY: Abbeville Press, 1994.

Grant Eldridge , freelance writer, Pontiac, Michigan