Max Bill

Swiss artist, architect, designer, typographer, and theorist Max Bill (1908–94) was one of the most important exponents of concrete and constructive art and a key figure in European applied arts and design history. Educated by such prominent teachers as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus, Bill immediately displayed a genius for work in fields as diverse as painting, sculpture, and design at the start of his career in the 1930s. In the 1950s he teamed up with Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher to found the legendary Ulm College of Design in Ulm, Germany, of which he became the first director. In his work, Max Bill carried on the legacy of the Bauhaus, both as an artist and a teacher, and made a decisive and lasting contribution to twentieth-century cultural life.

First published to accompany a 2008 exhibition at the Museum Marta Herford in Herford, Germany, this handsome volume displays Bill’s wide-ranging work and sets him in the context of his cultural milieu by featuring works by his contemporaries, such as Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky, and Donald Judd. Accompanying essays investigate Bill’s influence on other artists and the lasting importance of his oeuvre in the present.