Angela Thomas

Against the backdrop of historical events in Switzerland and Europe, the author traces Bill's diverse connections to the pioneers of concrete-constructivist art, to Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hans Arp, Georges Vantongerloo and others. With a look back at Max Bill's time at the Bauhaus Dessau, his links to the Parisian avant-garde circles of the 1930s, his membership of the Abstraction Cre¿ation and his lifelong artist friend Georges Vantongeloo with excursions to the "Zu¿rcher Konkrete" Richard Paul Lohse or Verena Loewensberg, the author paints a comprehensive picture of the formative artistic-intellectual networks in which Bill moved in the 1940s and afterwards.

Max Bill played an extraordinary role as a mediator between early modernism and a younger generation of concrete artists. His importance as an exhibition organiser, publicist and publisher is discussed, as is his formative influence on the development of concrete art in Latin America and his preoccupation with questions of urban planning and reconstruction during and after the Second World War.