

A Subversive Gleam: Max Bill and His Time: 1908–1939
A Subversive Gleam: Max Bill and His Time: 1908–1939
$45.00
Out Of Stock!
We will notify you when this product becomes available.
The early life of a modernist polymath and concrete-art pioneer: the first of a new multi-volume biography by Bill’s widow, art historian Angela Thomas
Swiss artist Max Bill (1908–94) was a master of many trades during his lifetime: he was at once an architect, graphic designer, painter, industrial designer and typeface designer. A student of greats such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Bill developed his own unique practice of integrated design under their tutelage, cultivating a more contemporary interpretation of more traditional Bauhaus sensibilities. He went on to become one of the main advocates of the concrete art movement, joining the Allianz group of Swiss artists in 1937. In this first volume of a major new biography, Bill’s widow, art historian Angela Thomas, recounts the formative years of Bill’s life from his childhood in a small Swiss town to his time at the Bauhaus. With a lively cadence that speaks to her intimate knowledge of the architect himself, Thomas details Bill’s beginnings in Zurich as a young independent designer as part of a larger portrait of Europe’s political and artistic world in the decades before World War II. Originally written in German and now translated into English for the first time, A Subversive Gleam provides readers with an in-depth account of the origins of one of Europe’s most influential designers.
Swiss artist Max Bill (1908–94) was a master of many trades during his lifetime: he was at once an architect, graphic designer, painter, industrial designer and typeface designer. A student of greats such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Bill developed his own unique practice of integrated design under their tutelage, cultivating a more contemporary interpretation of more traditional Bauhaus sensibilities. He went on to become one of the main advocates of the concrete art movement, joining the Allianz group of Swiss artists in 1937. In this first volume of a major new biography, Bill’s widow, art historian Angela Thomas, recounts the formative years of Bill’s life from his childhood in a small Swiss town to his time at the Bauhaus. With a lively cadence that speaks to her intimate knowledge of the architect himself, Thomas details Bill’s beginnings in Zurich as a young independent designer as part of a larger portrait of Europe’s political and artistic world in the decades before World War II. Originally written in German and now translated into English for the first time, A Subversive Gleam provides readers with an in-depth account of the origins of one of Europe’s most influential designers.
Related Products

Filling Stations: Studies on Types
$37.50

El Croquis 228: RCR Arquitectes (2017–2024)
$111.50

Before, After, & Beyond - Martino Gamper
$43.00

AV Monographs 267: Miralles Tagliabue EMBT 1994-2024
$55.00

Capturing Nature: 150 Years of Nature Printing
$100.00

a+u 648 24:09 Dwelling in France
$30.00

Lawrence Kocher: American Architect
$60.00

Brutal Bloc Postcards: Soviet Era Postcards from the Eastern Bloc
$32.50

Who the Hell is Müller-Brockmann? Conversations about the Swiss Style
$24.95

Fernanda Canales: My House, Your City: Privacy in a Shared World
$45.00

AV Monographs 270: Portfolio 2024
$55.00

DOMa 11
$32.50

AMAG 37 Christ & Gantenbein
$70.00

a+u 647 24:08 OMA Shohei Shigematsu
$33.00

a+u 646 24:07 Post-Digitality in Architecture
$30.00

The African Ancestors Garden: History and Memory at the International African American Museum
$59.95

Japan Style
$49.95

Louis I Kahn
$150.00

The Game of Mix and Match
$12.95

One & Other Numbers: with Alexander Calder
$14.95

Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture, Not Architecture
$150.00

Carlo Scarpa
$59.95

Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms
$150.00

Wild: The Naturalistic Garden
$59.95

Terrazzo (Italian Magazine Of Architecture & Design) (Issues #1/1988 - #8/1992) (Single Issues) (Ephemera)
$100.00

Tokyo Style, Kyoichi Tsuzuki
$90.00

Martino Gamper: Hook Book (Almost 1,000)
$35.00

Artifacts
$268.00

Arsham Motorsport
$320.00

Architect Pencils Box
$28.95

Architecture After Deleuze and Guattari
$39.95

Is Architecture Art?: An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Architecture
$34.95

Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria
$34.95

The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance
$34.95

Floris Hovers Archiblocks
$200.00

The Drafty House – The Beginnings of a Fourth Typology
$46.00

USA 1966
$28.00

Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior
$35.00

Spectacular Mexico: Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics
$35.00

The Freedom of the City
$27.00

Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Third Edition
$55.00

Bicycle City: Riding the Bike Boom to a Brighter Future
$32.00

Architecture and Objects (Art After Nature)
$24.95

The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction
$27.00

Notsu 4pc Black Pencils #2 Set | All Black Wood Writing Pencils with Travel Case
$9.00

Noguchi's Gardens: Landscape as Sculpture
$70.00

Revitalizing Japan: Architecture, Urbanization, and Degrowth
$44.95

Sharing Tokyo: Artifice and the Social World
$44.95

Reyner Banham: A Set of Actual Tracks
$32.00

A House Deconstructed
$44.95
804 Montgomery Street
San Francisco
California 94133
United States
+1 415 391 6757
Sign up to our mailing list
© Copyright 2025,
William Stout Architectural Books
Powered by Shopify with Colors