György
Kepes was a friend and collaborator of Moholy-Nagy. Also of Hungarian
descent, Kepes worked with Moholy first in Berlin and then in London
before emigrating to the US in 1937. He was educated at the Budapest
Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In his early career he gave up painting
for filmmaking. This he felt was a better medium for artistically
expressing his social beliefs. From 1930 to 1937 he worked off and
on with Moholy-Nagy and through him, first in Berlin and then in
London, met Walter Gropius and the science writer J. J. Crowther.
In 1937, he was invited by Moholy to run the Color and Light Department
at the New Bauhaus and later at the Institute of Design in Chicago.
He
taught there until 1943. In 1944 he wrote his landmark book Language
of Vision. This text was influential in articulating the Bauhaus
principles as well as the Gestalt theories. He taught at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology from 1946 to 1974 and in 1967 he established
the Center for Advanced Studies. During his career he also designed
for the Container Corporation of America and Fortune magazine as
well as Atlantic Monthly and Little, Brown.
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Issues:
February-March
1940
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