Lucia Schulz, essential piece of the school, Bauhaus official photographer

At the age of 21 she decides to leave her household. This being one of the first steps made by the woman who transcends history:
 
Schulz moves to Germany where she starts working in a publishing house. During these years her interest in photography arose and although she tried to study, she did not achieve her goal.

In 1920 she settles in Berlin, that same year she meets Lázló Moholy Nagy, a young Hungarian painter who recently emigrated, and they get married the following year. In order to continue breaking schemes, the newly started career of the husband did not allow him to cover the costs of marriage, so the home of the Moholy is supported by the income of Lucia Schulz, which was atypical at the time.

Her relationship as a couple goes beyond the sentimental realm, she transmits and brings to Moholy her intellect and skills, being an active collaborator in the theoretical work done by her husband. All her ideas materialized thanks to the writing of Lucía Schulz:
 
Moholy Nagy also enters the world of photography thanks to his beloved, together they begin to develop the theory of the frame. The text Produktion-Reproduktion published in 1922 is recognized only to Moholy, as well as the stills taken during the years in which they remained in the Bauhaus.

A few years before the couple met, in the Weimar Republic, Walter Gropius was developing an avant-garde movement that would give birth to the Staatliche Bauhaus, the most important art school of the 20th century. The idea of the Bauhaus was to foster human relations between teachers and students in a new form of education in which artists converged with artisans, functionality with aesthetics, and everything accessible to anyone who wanted it, including women.

Although the inclusion of women in the School was imminent, the equality of which their creators and teachers boasted did not exist. Doors were opened, but some, such as architecture, remained closed until women managed to break through barriers and settled into history. Today, one hundred years after the creation of the Bauhaus School, the role of women is undeniable. 

In 1923 Walter Gropius calls Lázló Moholy Nagy to take over the metal workshop and together with his wife they move to Weimar. Although she was simply accompanying her husband, she makes available all her knowledge in photography and publishing.

Finally, her desire to study photography becomes a reality at Bauhaus. Although Lucía Schulz was able to perfect herself through the school, she undoubtedly made a major contribution that is still not recognized as it should be. The same year they moved to Weimar, Gropius wanted the school to be financed without the subsidies it received from the state through the sale of patents on the products that were designed in the workshops. Schulz began to photograph the objects with her own imprint, stripping them of subjectivities, making them the undisputed protagonists of the scenes, facilitating Gropius' objective.

Her trajectory in different publishing houses also represents a great contribution of the documents that make the Bauhaus to be recognized globally are edited mainly by Lucía Schulz. 

In 1926, when the School was most successful, she moved to the famous Dessau building designed by Gropius, who commissioned Schulz to take the photographs. All the images that were printed in the newspapers of the time are taken by her, both of the buildings and of the dwellings of the masters, inside and out.

Lucía Schulz becomes the official photographer of the outstanding house of studies, documenting in turn its life through photographs, its people, its teachers and its works. Over a period of 5 years, he took more than 500 shots that teach us how to think and live in school. 

Lucía Schulz is one of those women who has unwittingly written the advancement of gender in the fields of the profession reflected in her images. Opening a path with her lens, she also entered the world of architecture, taking a small step towards a profession that until then was only for men. She takes architecture as an element of representation, becoming part of the history of the most transcendent avant-garde of the 20th century.

In 1928, under pressure from the Nazi Party, Gropius left the Bauhaus leadership accompanied by Lucia Schulz and Moholy Nagy. They settled in Berlin and soon the couple separated. She continues to work for him but begins to become independent and recognized.

In 1933, with Hitler's assumption of power in the German Reich⁽³⁾ the situation became more complex. Faced with imminent danger, Gropius and Moholy went into exile from Germany. A year later Lucía Schulz settles in London where she achieves influential contacts that turn her into an important portraitist of the high society. At the same time, she began to teach photography in prestigious schools. In the Second World War she began to dedicate herself to microfilming.

In 1954 Lucía Schulz discovers that the negatives of her emblematic photographs, which she understood had been burned in an attack in Berlin, were in the hands of Gropius who had used them to promote Bauhaus in the United States. After 3 years of claims, she manages to recover his negatives and the recognition of their authorship.

In 1959 she moved to Switzerland where she dedicated herself to artistic criticism and wrote books about the Bauhaus era. A few years before her death, in 1985, her first monograph was published. Only in 1995, with an exhibition in her name "Lucía Moholy. Bauhausfotografin" is officially recognized as an active member of the Bauhaus. Finally her struggle begins to bear fruit and to be recognized both for the work done with Moholy, as her contribution to the Bauhaus and her personal work.

Lucía Schulz, as I prefer to call her, serves the Bauhaus as part of a fundamental cog in the school's worldwide manifesto, even though her protagonism has been diminished. All art lovers have iconic images of buildings, furniture and people of the school taken by her stored in the retina, although few are attributed to her authorship for mere ignorance.

Unlike many women, her participation and work is recognized by the men around her. There are writings that confirm this, such as in the case of an international epistolary exchange of 1933 between Walter Gropius and Josep Lluís Sert,⁽⁴⁾ "Walter Gropius implies that he considers Lucia to be a singular woman, regardless of whether or not she remained married to László Moholy-Nagy."⁽⁵⁾

Although the struggle for gender equality has only just begun to bear fruit in this century, and although there is still a long way to go, it is confirmed once again that, like Lucía Moholy Schulz, great women have existed throughout history who have fended for themselves and have the right, like everyone else, to be recognized by their own name and trajectory.

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