LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY (1895-1946) IMPERIAL AIRWAYS / MAP OF EMPIRE & EUROPEAN AIR ROUTES. 1936.
25x39 1/2 inches, 63 1/2x100 1/4 cm. Curwen Press, London.
Condition B+: expertly restored loss in image, affecting text; restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; repaired tear through left margin into image.
Moholy-Nagy was a driving force within many of the avant-garde movements between the wars, from Constructivism to Dada to De Stijl. He taught at the Bauhaus from 1923-1928 and was a pioneer in photography, photomontage and new typography. He left Germany in 1935 and spent two years in London before settling in Chicago. In London, he found employment doing artwork for a men's clothing store and producing publicity material for Imperial Airways. He is credited with designing both a brochure and this poster map for the airline in 1936, each of which was unsigned. This world map is Moholy-Nagy's tribute to Henry Beck's recently-designed and published London tube map (1933). "The Tube Map imports the aesthetics of Eastern and Middle European avant-gardes, including Constructivism and the Bauhaus . . . In this context, Moholy-Nagy designed a world network map for the Imperial Airways airline that transferred Beck's topological aesthetics to the connections of world air traffic while juxtaposing a diagram and a map view." rare Albers & Moholy-Nagy, 58.