Макс Билл: Швейцариялық архитектор, суретші және дизайнер

Swiss architect, artist, painter and designer

Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer.

Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith during 1924–1927, Bill took up studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau under many teachers including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer from 1927 to 1929, after which he moved to Zurich.

After working on graphic designs for the few modern buildings being constructed, he built his first work, his own house and studio (1932–3) in Zurich Höngg. From 1937 onwards he was a prime mover behind the Allianz group of Swiss artists. Bill is widely considered the single most decisive influence on Swiss graphic design beginning in the 1950s with his theoretical writing and progressive work. His connection to the days of the Modern Movement gave him special authority. As an industrial designer, his work is characterized by a clarity of design and precise proportions. Examples are the elegant clocks and watches designed for Junghans, a long term client. Among Bill's most notable product designs is the "Ulmer Hocker" of 1954, a stool that can also be used as a shelf element, a speaker's desk, a tablet or a side table. Although the stool was a creation of Bill and Ulm school designer Hans Gugelot, it is often called "Bill Hocker" because the first sketch on a cocktail napkin was Bill's work. As a designer and artist, Bill sought to create forms which visually represent the New Physics of the early 20th century. He sought to create objects so that the new science of form could be understood by the senses: that is as a concrete art. Thus Bill is not a rationalist – as is typically thought – but rather a phenomenologist. One who understands embodiment as the ultimate expression of a concrete art. In this way he is not so much extending as re interpreting Bauhaus theory. Yet curiously Bill's critical interpreters have not really grasped this fundamental issue. His architectural work included an office building in Germany, a radio studio in Zurich, and a bridge in eastern Switzerland. He continued to produce architectural designs, such as those for a museum of contemporary art (1981) in Florence and for the Bauhaus Archive (1987) in Berlin. In 1982 he also entered a competition for an addition to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, built to a design by Mies van der Rohe.

In 1944, Bill became a professor at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich. In 1953, alongside Inge Aicher Scholl and Otl Aicher, he founded the Ulm School of Design (German: Hochschule für Gestaltung – HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school initially created in the tradition of the Bauhaus and which later developed a new design education approach integrating art and science. The school was notable for its inclusion of semiotics as a field of study. The school closed in 1968. Faculty and students included Tomás Maldonado, Otl Aicher, Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, John Lottes, Walter Zeischegg, and Peter Seitz. Bill was a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and chair of Environmental Design from 1967 to 1974. In 1973 he became an associate member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Science, Literature and Fine Art in Brussels. In 1976 he became a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In addition to his teaching, Bill wrote and lectured extensively on art, architecture and design, appearing at symposiums and design conferences around the world. In particular, he wrote books about Le Corbusier, Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and artistic theory. with his 1951 retrospective at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. He strongly influenced Brazilian artists like Franz Weissmann.

After a liaison with Nusch Éluard, Bill married the cellist and photographer Binia Mathilde Spoerri in January 1931. She died in 1988. From 1974 he was living together with art historian Angela Thomas; they married in 1991. Bill was also involved in politics. He was elected to the Zurich municipal council in 1961.) and implemented the idea of his father. The purpose of the foundation is to collect and take care of the works in possession of the Bill family, as well as the promotion of scientific research. Because Bill had not settled his estate, the legacy was divided equally between his son and his widow. The two heirs each independently set up a foundation. In 1997 Angela Thomas founded the max bill georges vantongerloo foundation, which is based in the house and studio built by Max Bill in 1967/68 in Zumikon. The foundation aims to make representative parts of the work of the two artist friends Vantongerloo and Bill as well as Haus Bill Zumikon accessible to the public.