A Poster by Max Bill or the Love of Geometry

Abstract

Among the posthumous papers2 of Max Bill (1908-1994), the best known of all the Swiss artists3 of the twentieth century, is an inconspicuous gray, loose-leaf folder in a brown envelope for a 62-page illustrated brochure for the Sozialer Wohnungs-und Siedlingsbau [Social Dwelling and Housing Development], published by the Delegierten fur Arbeitsbeschaffung [Delegate of the Work Program] and designed by Max Bill in 1944 in Zurich. On these pages, there are 478 sketches for the poster of the Concrete Art Exhibition4 held from March 18 to April 16, 1944, in the Basle Kunsthalle.5 Eight of these pages are of thin typewriter paper, size DIN A4 and partially marked on both sides; another part is similar to large transparent sheets from a roll. Then there is a row of smaller transparent sheets and labels of which the smallest measure only 34 x 102 mm. Others simply display sheet-filling designs. This bundle of sketches is unprecedented in Bill's legacy. There are far fewer sketches and designs preserved for other projects or commissions, often no more than a single plan. In connection to the total legacy, that means that Bill had not done much more with them. Aside from military service, during which Bill was assigned to camouflage activities, he worked at that time on a book about the Swiss bridge builder Robert Maillart,6 and on another book on settlement planning and simple building procedures that appeared in 1945 under the title of Wiederaufbau [Reconstruction].7 With both books, he desired to be remembered as both an architect and an architectural authority. The Concrete Art Exhibition in Basle showed individual works by foreign artists drawn from Basle collections,8 twenty selected graphic art works,9 thirty photos of works by foreign artists [because the originals were inaccessible due to the War] 10 and ten work sets by arp, bill, bodmer, kandinsky, klee, leuppi, lohse, mondrian, taeuber-arp, vantongerloo. In Halls 1 and la, there were cases with publications of the Allianz-Verlag,2 which Bill himself Translated by John Cullars, Bibliographer for