Ein Lichtspiel schwarz weiss grau is perhaps Moholy-Nagy’s best known film work, and shows his Light Space Modulator, or ‘light prop for an electric stage’, as it was sometimes called.

Light Space Modulator is a key work in the history of kinetic and even new media art, and, arguably, one of the most important works of art of its period.

First conceived by Moholy equired a number of collaborators to get fully realised. It was intended as the centrepiece in the Contemporary Room of the Provinzialmuseum in Hannover, which had been planned (but was never realized) by Moholy-Nagy, along with the museum’s director, Alexander Dorner.

Light Space Modulator was exhibited in 1930 at an exhibition of the work of the German Werkbund in Paris. As an object, it is a complex and extremely beautiful arrangement of metal, plastic, and glass elements, many of which can move, driven by an electric motor, and are surrounded by arrangements of coloured electric lights.

Moholy-Nagy used it to produce light shows, which he then photographed or filmed, as for the film being shown here. The film captures the kinetic brilliance of the sculpture, albeit in black and white.

László Moholy-Nagy was a painter, photographer, sculptor, typographer and designer, as well as a professor in the German Bauhaus and Director of the short-lived New Bauhaus in Chicago. He was also one of the most influential artists of the early 20th century, especially for those working across different media and disciplines.

He was born László Weiss in Hungary in 1895, studied law in Budapest and served in the First World War, before being injured in 1917.

While recovering from his wounds he founded the ‘Ma’ artists’ group. After the War and qualifying as a lawyer, he moved first to Vienna and then Berlin, where he was exposed to Constructivism and other avant-garde movements, and became involved in making experimental photographic and Dada works.

He joined the German Bauhaus in 1923, replacing Johannes Itten as the instructor on the preliminary design course. He resigned from the Bauhaus in 1928 and undertook freelance design and photography work, then left Germany in 1935 in response to the political situation and worked in London, before moving to Chicago in response to an invitation to become Director of the New Bauhaus in 1937.

Unfortunately, owing to financial problems, the New Bauhaus closed after a year, but Moholy-Nagy was able to open the School of Design, later to be known as the Institute of Design, in 1939. He died of Leukaemia in Chicago in 1946.