Max Bill

Swiss artist Max Bill was one of the main protagonists of the Concrete Art movement. He was highly influential, practicing not only as an architect, painter, sculptor, industrial and graphic designer, but also as a scholar, politician and writer. Born in Winterthur in 1908, he enrolled at the Bauhaus Dessau and expanded the theories formulated by Theo van Doesburg in the 1920s. Bill always relied on mathematics, geometry and order to create his works. 

Kugelschale mit drei gleichen Ausschnitten consists of three curved circles placed at right angles to each other in order to create a sphere punctuated with round voids. The sculpture not only fascinates by its perfect proportions, but also exemplifies Bill’s ability to communicate simple ideas through elegance and purity. Devoid of any content beyond itself, the geometrical composition reveals the artist’s predilection for logical structure, as well as the attention he gave to colour, form, space and light. As Max Bill stated in the catalogue dedicated to the exhibition Die gute Form he organized in 1949, “the goal of concrete art is to develop objects for intellectual use, much as man creates objects for the material use. Concrete art in its final consequence is the pure expression of harmonic measure and law. It organizes systems and gives life to these rules with artistic means.” The potential of three equal volumes combined as a unit preoccupied Max Bill for more than a decade.