Max Bill

zwei umschlossene quadrate, 1971

Max Bill – architect, designer, painter, sculptor, contemporary commentator and lecturer – defined concrete art as being ultimately “the pure expression of harmonic dimensions and laws”. He called for a mathematical approach to creative design in order to maintain controllable results. Bill was a member of the circle of ›Zurich Concrete‹ artists, alongside Camille Graeser, Verena Loewensberg and Richard Paul Lohse. Bill had studied at the Bauhaus under Schlemmer, Kandinsky and Klee. The essential feature of Max Bill’s entire oeuvre is mathematically precise work with geometric elements of order. Two principles of his art are the creation of rhythm in an enclosed surface or shape, and instilling the static condition of rest with dynamism. In the vertical format of two enclosed squares six colored lines of the same length intersect at right angles on a white ground, creating two colored squares, enclosed and set one above the other. The white background color acts as an integrating, active element, allowing a continuing visual slide between figure and ground.