Max Bill created countless design objects, paintings, sculptures, posters, graphic works, and buildings. Product characteristics such as functionality, durability, and an economical use of resources underlie Bill's designs and his products. The subject of industrial design was of particular importance to Max Bill during the economic upswing of the post-war period and in the face of destruction: he saw it as an opportunity to improve the environment with movable objects. He took a clear stance: Bill frowned upon design whose content served commercial goals, followed fashionable trends, and encouraged an economy of wear and tear. The well-known phrase “beauty from function and as function” comes from one of his lectures.

He always saw his life and his creative work in political terms. Even when he painted a picture, he believed he was painting it for the public and entrusting it to society.

From 1924 to 1927, Max Bill attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich and then began his studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he learned from Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy,
Oskar Schlemmer and Hannes Meyer until 1928.
“If you understand Bauhaus correctly, not just under the seal of a few artists who happened to become teachers there. Of course, the Bauhaus is still something where you say: yes, they wanted to do something like that — but they didn’t actually achieve it at the time. It was stopped at the moment when it might actually have come to fruition.”

When he returned to Switzerland, he campaigned for the German emigrants. This political commitment prevented Max Bill from following his friend and teacher Moholy-Nagy to the USA after the end of the Second World War as the founder of the “New Bauhaus.” “When he asked me, I actually had the impression that it would be wrong to go to America. We had enough other things to do here in Germany. And it was because of this approach that the idea of the Ulm School of Design came about.”

Bill received his first entry in the Swiss state security files in 1936 for illegally harboring persecuted people from Nazi Germany. This also marked the beginning of police surveillance by the Swiss State Security Service, which lasted over 50 years. The files state that he had to pay a “hefty fine” as he was a notorious repeat offender and had often harbored persecuted people from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy without properly registering them with the residents’ registration office.

From 1944 to 1945, Max Bill taught at the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich. In 1948, he traveled to Germany for the first time since 1932. He returned to Germany as an architect and became the founding rector of the Ulm School of Design. Planning began in 1950. Built in 1951, the university maintained an open, democratic campus with extensive grounds, including an auditorium, cafeteria, lecture halls, and workshops. It was a place where professors and students met, where theory and practice were intertwined. Bill was the first rector of the HfG until he resigned in 1956. He taught for another year and then withdrew from Ulm in 1957 due to disagreements with the Geschwister Scholl Foundation.

His loyalty to modernist principles can also be found in the written battle between Jan Tschichold and Bill on assymetric typography, which Tschichold had renounced in later years of his life. Both positions are documented in Bosshard’s book: Der Typo­gra­fie­streit der Moderne – Max Bill kontra Jan Tschichold (The Modernist Typography-Battle, Max Bill versus Jan Tschichold).

From 1967 to 1974, he took over the first professorship for environmental design at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. In 1988, he received his second-to-last entry in the Swiss state security files. And in 1993, Max Bill was awarded the “Art Nobel Prize,” the fifth “Praemium Imperiale” in Tokyo. (kl)