The Industrialist and the Artist: László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Paepcke, and the New Bauhaus in Chicago, 1918–46

Abstract

Abstract In 1937, a group of businessmen organized as the Association of Arts and Industries, on the recommendation of German Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, invited the Hungarian artist and designer László Moholy-Nagy to Chicago to reestablish the Bauhaus school of design, which the Nazis had shut down in 1933. Moholy-Nagy, who was exiled in England at the time, had been a prominent member of the Bauhaus faculty. Although the New Bauhaus was forced to close in 1938 after less than a year in operation owing to the association's withdrawal of financial support, Container Corporation president Walter Paepcke helped Moholy establish the School of Design in Chicago in 1939, which retained the Bauhaus pedagogy and several members of its faculty. Moholy led the design school, which changed its name to the Institute of Design in 1944, until his death in 1946. Drawing on archival resources at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois, Chicago, this essay looks at Moholy's immigration to the United States and his close relationship with Paepcke, an arts patron who created jobs for other Bauhaus designers including Herbert Bayer. Moholy and Paepcke attempted to incorporate the socialistic Bauhaus pedagogy with the practical demands of capitalistic American business. Their close personal and professional relationship reveals the limits and possibilities of such a cultural and economic fusion.