Few artists spanned the movements of early-twentieth-century art as completely as did Hans Richter. Richter was a significant force in the developments of expressionism, Dada, de Stijl, constructivism and Surrealism and the creator, with Viking Eggeling, of the abstract cinema. Along with Theo van Doesburg. Laszlo Moholy Nagy, El Lissitsky, and a few others, he is one of the artists crucial to an understanding of the role of the arts in the reconstruction era following World War I. After his emigration to the United States in 1941, he contributed enormously to modernism in the Unit@ States and served as an important conduit between the American and European art communities.