Lot Essay:

Yuichi "Eugene" Idaka (1914–2012) was born to Japanese immigrants in Seattle, Washington and after spending significant portion of his childhood in Japan, moved to Chicago in 1928 and helped run a Japanese Camera Club. He studied and taught at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the 1940's while working as a freelance photographer. He later opened his own photography and design studio at 49 West Ontario with fellow students Angelo Testa and Edgar Bartolucci, eventually specializing in architectural photography. During this period he formed a close working relationship with László Moholy-Nagy and printed a number of Moholy's own early photographs (Lots 12-21 in this auction).

In 1951 Idaka was included in the group exhibition Abstraction in Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, where his work was shown alongside Moholy-Nagy's work. He became well known for his architectural and interior design photography and was featured in numerous architecture and design publications throughout his career, including Architectural Digest and The New York Times, before his death in 2012. His work appears in nearly twenty museum collections, notably the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Getty Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Moholy-Nagy Foundation; Smart Museum of Art and Regenstein Library (papers/archive), and University of Chicago, among others. 

Proceeds from the sale of Lots 12-35 in this auction will benefit the continuing work of the Bauhaus Chicago Foundation. 

Founded in 2010, BCF is a not-for-profit whose mission is ‘to ensure that the educational principles formulated in the field of creative arts at the Bauhaus and taught by László Moholy-Nagy in Chicago between 1937 and 1946 are preserved and documented for future generations.’ After its founding, the Foundation became an impressive repository of documents, photographs, artworks, and writings preserving the legacy related to Moholy’s school.  This research collection expanded significantly through gifts and bequests of primary source material.  A great share of the archives and artworks collected were gifted to the Ryerson & Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago, BCF’s esteemed partner.  That collection represents some 160 faculty and students of László Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus/Institute of Design.  Other artworks have been gifted to numerous university museums in Illinois and Indiana as well as fifteen other museums in Canada, Japan, Germany, and the United States. 

Unframed.
Sheet: 15 x 14 in.

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