History & Practice Session 6: The Ulm School of Design

​Max Bill

Max Bill was born on December 22nd 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland. From 1924 to 1927 he trained as a silversmith apprentice before going on to study at the Bauhaus until 1929. He then moved to Zurich, where he worked as a graphic designer for modern buildings. It was here that he built his first work - his own house and studio.

​As an artist and industrial designer, Bill was highly regarded for the major influence his work had on Swiss graphic design. Clear, elegant precision is a trademark of his work - he was also a driving force in pioneering the Concrete Art movement, which focused heavily on geometrical abstraction. Some well-known examples of his work include the clocks and watches he designed for Junghans, the 'Pavillon-Skulptur' in Zurich, and the 'Endless Stairs' in Ludwigshafen.

Bill became a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts in 1944, and later at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts in 1967. As well as teaching as a lecturer, he produced a vast amount of both factual and theoretical literature on art, architecture and design. He travelled to conferences worldwide to share his knowledge and became a member of multiple well-known art academies and societies. But perhaps his biggest legacy may be designing and cofounding the Ulm School of Design in Germany, which went on to integrate art with science and the study of semiotics.

Bill died of a heart attack en-route to hospital at the age of 85 in 1994. His work lives on in galleries, museums and exhibitions, and the influence he had on Brazilian artists in particular with the concrete art movement.