Max Bill

(Switzerland) *1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland; †1994 in Berlin, Germany

As a sculptor, Max Bill combines a ‘mathematical way of thinking’ with a free artistic sensibility and imagination. His intention is not so much to express himself, but rather to give form to existing aesthetic content. In his sculptural work, he seeks to eliminate the distinction between artistic intuition and scientific knowledge. Bill sees the geometric relationships of surfaces and lines to one another and to space as the primary element of all creative design. With his ‘endless ribbons’, he attempts to represent the poetry of mathematics when it comes to the issues of finitude and infinity, as well as the relationship between rhythms and laws. It is as if in his sculpture the eternal process of transformation has come to a momentary standstill. Combining precision, clarity, and stringency along with an aloofness, his sculpture is at the same time resonance, feeling its way with almost tender movements into the surrounding space. Binaries like beginning and end, movement and rest, tension and harmony, volume and emptiness are sublated. Everything turns back on itself, giving itself order using its own capacities, and space emerges by way of the most modest, puritan means.