Max Bill

Max Bill (1908-1994) was one of the most famous figures in the history of Swiss design. Designer, painter, sculptor and also a great theoretician, with his work Max Bill helped to create a bridge between the teachings of the Bauhaus, the artistic avant-gardes of the early twentieth century and the most advanced design practices of the post-war period. A poet of rigorous minimalism, he sought in all his works a sense of universality that could only be achieved, according to him, through the use of strict mathematical rules: qualities that can be clearly seen in his two most famous creations, the series of watches designed for Junghans and the Ulmer Hocker stool (later re-proposed by Zanotta under the name of Sgabillo), of Franciscan simplicity. Multifaceted and endowed with great natural talent, Max Bill has crossed different creative fields during his life, from his beginnings as a silversmith in Zurich to his studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau (1927-1929) up to his adhesion in the 1930s to the concrete art movement founded by Theo van Doesburg, of which Max Bill was a leading exponent especially thanks to his sculptures. At the same time he also worked as an architect, designing for example the Swiss pavilion at the VI Triennale in Milan (1936). It was only in the post-war period that Bill devoted himself to product design, a field in which he is also remembered for having been one of the founders of the famous Ulm School in 1951, a true temple of functionalism, considered the spiritual heir of the Bauhaus. He was the first rector of the institute and led the department of Architecture and Design until 1956, when he resigned after some disagreements with other professors such as Hans Gugelot and Tomas Maldonado, whom he considered too flattened on a technical-scientific methodology incapable of giving the right emphasis to the artistic dimension of design. Returning to Zurich, he began to concentrate his activity on painting and sculpture and was a member of the Swiss parliament.