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Nathan Lerner

1913–1997

Biography

Nathan Lerner (1913 – February 8, 1997) was an American photographer and industrial designer involved in the New Bauhaus (later the IIT Institute of Design).

The New York Times wrote that his work "was inextricably bound up in the history of visual culture in Chicago," where he documented the vibrant immigrant neighborhood of Maxwell Street in the 1930s and later enrolled in the New Bauhaus under László Moholy-Nagy's tutelage. He stayed on as faculty after the school became the Institute of Design, and eventually was made educational director. While at the school he developed a light box technique which was a significant contribution to abstract photography, as well as a plywood-bending machine used in many of the school's furniture designs. After leaving the school in 1949 he started an industrial design practice best known for thermo-formed plastic products, including the now-ubiquitous bear-shaped honey bottle. He was Henry Darger's landlord and discovered Darger's work shortly before the artist's death.

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Artworks

Left Right
  • Closed Eye

    Nathan Lerner
    1940
  • Light Volume

    Nathan Lerner
    1937
  • Eye and Barbed Wire

    Nathan Lerner
    1945
  • [title not known]

    Nathan Lerner
    c.1940
  • Morning Light

    Nathan Lerner
    1978
  • [title not known]

    Nathan Lerner
    c.1940
  • [title not known]

    Nathan Lerner
    c.1940
  • [title not known]

    Nathan Lerner
    c.1940
See all 40
Artwork
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