Max Bill

Born in 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland, Bill trained at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1924-27 under the tutorage of Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. From 1931 Bill abandoned figuration in his work in favour of geometric abstraction, adopting Van Doesburg’s theory of ‘concrete art’, that is painting ‘entirely conceived and formulated...before its execution’. From 1932-36 Bill was a member of the Paris based artists group Abstraction-Création exhibiting with them for the first time in 1933. In 1936, Bill formulated the Principles of Concrete Art, promoting it as a movement both in Europe and South America, inspiring numerous groups; most significantly the concrete art movement in Brazil. Bill exhibited at the Museu de Arte, São Paulo in 1950 and participated in the 1st Bienal de São Paulo in 1951 winning the international prize for sculpture. In 1944 Bill founded the magazine Abstrakt Konkret organising an exhibition of the same name at Kunsthalle, Basel. Bill co-founded the Ulm School of Design in 1951, where he was the principle until 1956. Bill died in Berlin in 1994.