Untitled - from 'The International Association of Art Portfolio' (1971) Max Bill

Untitled - from 'The International Association of Art Portfolio' (1971) Max Bill

Untitled, from 'The International Association of Art Portfolio'

By Max Bill

Medium - Screen print

Edition - 25/3

Signed - Yes

Size - 640mm x 460mm

Date -1971

Condition - excellent. 10 out of 10.

Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith in 1924-1927, Bill began studying at the Bauhaus in Dessau under many teachers, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer from 1927 to 1929, after which he moved to Zurich.

Bill is widely considered to be the most defining influence on Swiss graphic design beginning in the 1950s with his theoretical writing and progressive work.[3] His connection to the days of the modern movement gave him special authority. As an industrial designer, his work is characterized by a clear design and precise proportions.[4] Examples are the elegant watches and clocks designed for Junghans, a long-term customer. Among Bill's most notable product designs is the "Ulmer Hocker" from 1954, a stool that can also be used as a shelf element, a speaker table, a tablet or a side table. Although the stool was the creation of Bill and Ulm school designer Hans Gugelot, it is often called the "Bill Hocker" because the first sketch on a cocktail napkin was Bill's work.

As a designer and artist, Bill sought to create forms that visually represented the new physics of the early 20th century. He sought to create objects so that the new science of form could be understood by the senses: it is like a concrete art. Bill is thus not a rationalist – as is typically thought – but rather a phenomenologist. Someone who understands embodiment as the ultimate expression of a concrete art. In this way, he does not so much expand as reinterpret Bauhaus theory. But strangely enough, Bill's critical interpreters have not really understood this fundamental question. He made extra geometric paintings and spherical sculptures, some based on the Möbius strip, in stone, wood, metal and plaster. His architectural work included an office building in Germany, a radio studio in Zurich and a bridge in eastern Switzerland.