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Lot Essay
Painted in 1922, Konstruktion B VI emerged at a pivotal turning point in László Moholy-Nagy’s bourgeoning artistic career. When the young Hungarian-born artist had moved to Berlin two years prior, he was astounded by the exhilarating and stimulating environment of the city, and quickly immersed himself in the local avant-garde art scene. Profoundly influenced by the Berlin DADA movement, as well as his discovery of Russian Constructivism, Moholy-Nagy began to embrace new materials and techniques across his multi-faceted oeuvre, and was soon considered to be among the most innovative voices of his generation. Over the course of 1922 he reached the richly contemplative mature style that would sustain him throughout the rest of his life, as he adopted a purely abstract language of form and began to investigate the visual properties of light and space through his compositions.
During this period of innovation and exploration, painting remained at the core of Moholy-Nagy’s practice, the primary route through which he would first examine his ideas. As early as May 1919, he had professed: “I’m doing right to become a painter. It is my gift to project my vitality, my building power, through light, color, form. I can give life as a painter” (quoted in S. Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, p. 12). In particular, he was intrigued by the ways in which subtle shifts in the color or placement of the forms within a canvas might alter the balance of the composition, at once enhancing or destroying a particular effect. Discussing his work from this period more than two decades later, Moholy-Nagy explained the driving force behind their conception: “My transparent pictures around 1921 became completely freed from all elements reminiscent of nature. Their genesis was determined by a complete liberation from a necessity to record. I wanted to eliminate all factors, which might disturb their clarity—in contrast for instance with Kandinsky’s paintings, which reminded me of an undersea world. My desire was to work with nothing but the peculiar characteristics of colors, with their pure relationships. I chose simple geometric forms as a step toward such objectivity” (“Abstract of an Artist,” quoted in R. Motherwell, ed., The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist, New York, 1947, p. 75).
In works such as Konstruktion B VI, Moholy-Nagy’s new language came to the fore. Here, a series of geometric elements lock together in a tight configuration at the center of the canvas, overlapping one another in an ambiguous cascade, each shape precisely engineered and placed to create a harmonious unit of form, color and illusory space. Using gentle gradations of pastel tones within each shape, Moholy-Nagy suggests a degree of transparency in the colored planes, establishing not only their individuality but also a sense of space between them. As a result, each of these elements appears as an independent floating, crystalline plane, generating a mysterious sense of three-dimensionality within the picture. “I became interested in painting-with-light, not on the surface of the canvas, but directly in space,” Moholy-Nagy explained. “Painting transparencies was the start. I painted as if colored light was projected on a screen... I thought this effect could be enhanced by placing translucent screens of different shapes, one behind the other, projecting the colored lights over each unit...” (quoted in S. Moholy-Nagy, op. cit., 1969, p. 75).
In Konstruktion B VI, Moholy-Nagy sets these delicately layered planes of color and overlapping lines against a deep black ground, a choice driven by his growing interest in new industrial plastics and enamels. Many of these non-traditional materials, particularly plastics intended for use as highly resistant electrical sheeting or insulation, were darkly opaque and required a carefully considered process of construction and composition to achieve the effects the artist was searching for. As such, his paintings with inky-black grounds allowed him to explore different layering techniques, to play with the vibrancy of certain colors against powerfully dark surroundings, and examine the interaction between various shapes, before committing himself to a final composition within these unconventional materials.
Konstruktion B VI was among a series of these experimental paintings featured in an important solo-exhibition of Moholy-Nagy’s work at the Galerie Neue Kunst Fides in Dresden, in May 1926. Within the small suite of rooms, designed by the Bauhaus master Hinnerk Scheper, Moholy-Nagy grouped several of these dark ground paintings together along one wall, revealing the powerful effects that could be achieved through subtle shifts in the arrangement, color or treatment of certain shapes, using his simple, refined vocabulary of abstract geometric forms to conjure entire worlds beyond the picture plane.
During this period of innovation and exploration, painting remained at the core of Moholy-Nagy’s practice, the primary route through which he would first examine his ideas. As early as May 1919, he had professed: “I’m doing right to become a painter. It is my gift to project my vitality, my building power, through light, color, form. I can give life as a painter” (quoted in S. Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, p. 12). In particular, he was intrigued by the ways in which subtle shifts in the color or placement of the forms within a canvas might alter the balance of the composition, at once enhancing or destroying a particular effect. Discussing his work from this period more than two decades later, Moholy-Nagy explained the driving force behind their conception: “My transparent pictures around 1921 became completely freed from all elements reminiscent of nature. Their genesis was determined by a complete liberation from a necessity to record. I wanted to eliminate all factors, which might disturb their clarity—in contrast for instance with Kandinsky’s paintings, which reminded me of an undersea world. My desire was to work with nothing but the peculiar characteristics of colors, with their pure relationships. I chose simple geometric forms as a step toward such objectivity” (“Abstract of an Artist,” quoted in R. Motherwell, ed., The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist, New York, 1947, p. 75).
In works such as Konstruktion B VI, Moholy-Nagy’s new language came to the fore. Here, a series of geometric elements lock together in a tight configuration at the center of the canvas, overlapping one another in an ambiguous cascade, each shape precisely engineered and placed to create a harmonious unit of form, color and illusory space. Using gentle gradations of pastel tones within each shape, Moholy-Nagy suggests a degree of transparency in the colored planes, establishing not only their individuality but also a sense of space between them. As a result, each of these elements appears as an independent floating, crystalline plane, generating a mysterious sense of three-dimensionality within the picture. “I became interested in painting-with-light, not on the surface of the canvas, but directly in space,” Moholy-Nagy explained. “Painting transparencies was the start. I painted as if colored light was projected on a screen... I thought this effect could be enhanced by placing translucent screens of different shapes, one behind the other, projecting the colored lights over each unit...” (quoted in S. Moholy-Nagy, op. cit., 1969, p. 75).
In Konstruktion B VI, Moholy-Nagy sets these delicately layered planes of color and overlapping lines against a deep black ground, a choice driven by his growing interest in new industrial plastics and enamels. Many of these non-traditional materials, particularly plastics intended for use as highly resistant electrical sheeting or insulation, were darkly opaque and required a carefully considered process of construction and composition to achieve the effects the artist was searching for. As such, his paintings with inky-black grounds allowed him to explore different layering techniques, to play with the vibrancy of certain colors against powerfully dark surroundings, and examine the interaction between various shapes, before committing himself to a final composition within these unconventional materials.
Konstruktion B VI was among a series of these experimental paintings featured in an important solo-exhibition of Moholy-Nagy’s work at the Galerie Neue Kunst Fides in Dresden, in May 1926. Within the small suite of rooms, designed by the Bauhaus master Hinnerk Scheper, Moholy-Nagy grouped several of these dark ground paintings together along one wall, revealing the powerful effects that could be achieved through subtle shifts in the arrangement, color or treatment of certain shapes, using his simple, refined vocabulary of abstract geometric forms to conjure entire worlds beyond the picture plane.