Max Bill : Form Function Beauty

In celebration of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, Lorenzelli Arte pays homage to this great man, artist, and friend, with a major exhibition. Over forty paintings from the second half of the 1940s up until the beginning of the 1980s will be displayed, in addition to six sculptures (including: curva infinita da un anello II, gilded brass, 1947/49; superficie unilaterale a forma di un circolo, gilded brass, 1957; and gemelli da un quarto di sfera, black granite, 1971). The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a critical anthology and color reproductions of all the pieces being shown. 

Max Bill was without a doubt, one of the most artistically heterogeneous figures in the field of visual arts during the twentieth century, with work ranging from painting to sculpture, from architecture to design and to graphics. He was moreover a theoretician in all the sectors in which he participated; deeply involved in education, he decisively influenced future generations. 

Max Bill was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, on December 22, 1908. He studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he was the pupil of major artists like: Albers, Kandinsky, Klee, Gropius, Meyer, Moholy-Nagy, Schlemmer. Between 1932 and 1936 he was active in the Parigian group “Abstraction-Création”. In 1932 Bill met Hans Arp and Piet Mondrian. The first sculptures by Bill date back to 1933; his meeting with Georges Vantongerloo took place during the same year. In 1935 he met Max Ernst. Then, in 1936 he was awarded the “Grand Prix” for the exposition in the Swiss Pavilion at the Triennial of Milan. In 1937 he joined “Allianz”, a union of Swiss modern artists, from which developed the publishing house of the same name in 1941. He met Anton Pevsner. From the 1940s on, Bill was one of the major figures of reference in contemporary art, and he received various institutional, national, and international appointments. In 1944 he participated in the organization of the first international exhibition “Concrete Arte” at the Kunsthalle in Basel. Bill's activity during this period was very intense. In addition to dedicating himself to his art, he also taught and held conferences, wrote and published articles, organized exhibitions, and continued to travel abroad frequently. Also during these years, Bill made contacts with Frank Kupka, Julius Bissier, and Henry van de Velde. In 1951 he was again awarded the Grand Prix at the Triennial of Milan and then the grand prize for sculpture at the First Biennial of Art in Sao Paulo. He became provost of the Upper School of Ulm e director of the architecture department and of the training department. During the 1950s and 1960s he had the opportunity to meet many internationally famous architects with whom he began major collaborations and developed projects: Max Bense, Charles Eames e Philip Johnson, Edgar Kaufmann, Konrad Wachsmann. In 1964 he was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects. At the end of the 1960s, retrospective exhibitions were dedicated to Bill at the museums of Berne, Hannover, Dusseldorf, the Hague, Zurich, Paris, and Grenoble. Between 1967 and 1971 he was a member of the Swiss National Council. In 1972 entered the Academy of Arts of Berlin. In 1973, he was honorary council for UNESCO. In 1979 he received an honorary degree in engineering from the University of Stockholm. During the 1970s and 1980s, Bill continued his endless theoretical activity and was often invited to hold conferences at important education institutions. Bill also received a variety of awards and honors: the Marconi prize for art and science (Bologna 1988), Imperial Award of Japan (1993), and an honorary degree in Technical Sciences from the Helvetian Technical Institute of Zurich. Many of his sculptures can be found in public spaces in Europe and abroad and his works are included in the collections of some of the world's most important museums: Kunstmuseum of Basel, Kunstmuseum of Berlin, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art of Dallas, Niedersächsisches Landmuseum in Hannover, the Louisiana Museum of Humlebaek, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and at The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. Max Bill died December 9, 1994 in Berlin at the age of 86.