Max Bill

(Swiss, 1908–1994)

Max Bill was a Swiss artist and designer who founded the Concrete Art movement. His interpretations of Constructivism through painting and sculpture, integrated the study of both geometry and mathematics into his art practice. “I am of the opinion that it is possible to develop an art largely on the basis of mathematical thinking,” Bill once reflected. Born on December 22, 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich from 1924–1927, then with Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee at the Bauhaus school in Dessau for the next two years. Later the co-founder of the Ulm School of Arts and Crafts, he served as the head of architecture and product design there during the 1950s, and later as part of the Swiss Parliament from 1967 to 1971. Bill died on December 9, 1994 in Berlin at the age of 85.Today, he is perhaps best remembered today for his chronoscopes (wrist watches) which are manufactured by the Junghans company in Germany. His works are also held in the collections of a number of institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.