Max Bill Biography
Max Bill (Winterthur, 22 December 1908 – Berlin, 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, painter, sculptor, designer and graphic designer. What is surprising in Max Bill's work is undoubtedly the extreme versatility of his artistic activities. This author brings together the entire field of visual arts, being an architect, designer, painter, sculptor and graphic designer, as well as theorist of the various art forms to which he contributed. A true crossroads, a multifaceted genius, of the arts of the 20th century. His training began as a silversmith at the Zurich School of Applied Arts. But soon, in 1927, he was attracted by the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that was the Bauhaus in Dessau. In this field he was a student of top-level artists including Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Walter Gropius. In 1929 he opened his profession as an architect in Zurich. In 1931 he married Bina Spoerri, with whom he shared future experiences. In the following years he had meetings with the major artists of the time. From 1932 to 1936 Bill was a member of the Parisian group Abstraction-Création in whose gallery he exhibited for the first time in 1933. In 1937 he participated in the V CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne). In that year he joined Allianz, the union of modern Swiss artists. From the 1940s and especially in the post-war period, Bill became one of the major figures of reference in Switzerland for contemporary art, taking on various institutional, national and international roles. It is remembered that among other things he was a member of the Swiss commission for art from 1961 to 1969, or a member of the Swiss national council from 1967 to 1971. In his long career Max Bill had continuous contacts with the major artists of his century, representing the Swiss art at the highest levels. Among the architects and artists with whom he exchanged contacts, in addition to the aforementioned masters, we can remember: Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Charles Eames, Piet Mondrian, Georges Vantongerloo, Hans Arp, Max Ernst and others. In the seventies and eighties Max Bill devoted himself mainly to art. He died in 1994 at the age of 86.
