László Moholy-Nagy Books

Covers Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum fur Gestaltung, 21 June to 4 September, 2006, and following venues

This companion volume to a major exhibition of the work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy highlights the extraordinary range of his prolific career. Throughout his career Moholy-Nagy produced brilliant works in painting, film, photography, sculpture, set design and typography. A leading proponent of the Bauhaus School, he strove to apply artistic principles to every aspect of daily life. This companion volume to a retrospective features 170 works from all phases of Moholy-Nagy's career. Essays on his involvement with the Bauhaus School; his late paintings; his photographs, photograms, and photosculptures; and his accomplishments in the field of graphic art are complemented by numerous color illustrations. The book also documents the reconstruction of a never completed work, The Room of Today, which incorporates the most important themes Moholy-Nagy brought to his art. Readers viewing his work for the first time, along with those already possessing a deep appreciation for his art, will celebrate this long-overdue volume.

The United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 initiated numerous programs focused on assessing, managing, and conserving the earth's biological diversity. A significant topic was the mountain environment, particularly the alpine zone, which consists of treeless regions at high altitudes. Despite its small land coverage, the alpine zone is home to a diverse array of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes uniquely adapted to cold conditions. This region is crucial for global biodiversity and provides essential resources for both mountain and lowland inhabitants. However, human-induced changes such as soil erosion, habitat loss, genetic diversity decline, and climate change threaten these ecosystems. The European Community Biodiversity Strategy emphasizes that the global loss of biodiversity and the interdependence of species and ecosystems necessitate coordinated international efforts. Effective biodiversity management requires a solid understanding of its qualitative and quantitative aspects at various scales. This is especially vital for mountains, which are significant biodiversity hotspots both in absolute terms and when compared to surrounding lowlands.

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), a prominent Hungarian artist, was a key figure in classical modernist photography and a prolific writer on the subject since the early 1920s. His essays, polemics, and reviews established photography as the leading medium of modernity. This volume collects his extensive writings on photography for the first time, featuring thirty-eight shorter articles alongside reprints of his two significant works, *Painting, Photography, Film* and *60 Photos*. Spanning his tenure as a Bauhaus instructor in Dessau, his freelance design work in Berlin, Amsterdam, and London, and his role as a professor at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, Moholy-Nagy crafted a revolutionary aesthetic. This book presents photography as a foundation for an original theory of modernity. The editors, Steffen Siegel and Bernd Stiegler, are both esteemed professors in their respective fields, focusing on the theory and history of photography and modern German literature in media contexts.

A kiváló történész szerző (A rossz hírű Báthoryak, az Erdélyi boszorkányperek, Kard és szerelem, Az erős fekete bég, Nádasdy Ferenc stb. írója) új, a korábbiakhoz hasonlóan érdekfeszítő könyve talányos sorsú, nevezetes történelmi személyiségek portréját rajzolja meg. A köztudatban szörnyetegként élő, jobbágylányok vérében fürdő Báthory Erzsébet, az európai formátumú Bethlen Gábor fejedelem, a félreismert Mihai Viteazul, azaz Vitéz Mihály egyénisége vagy egy XVII. századi politikai gyilkosság története önmagában is izgalmas olvasmány. A szerző igyekszik lerombolni az olvasóban az említett személyekkel, eseményekkel kapcsolatban élő, hamisnak bizonyult történelmi közhelyeket és előítéleteket, elfogultságokat. A könyv utolsó írása a Habsburg-ház uralkodóinak a magyar történelemben játszott szerepét elemzi eredeti, egyeseket bizonyára kissé provokáló megközelítéssel.