

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

Pierre Culot
$75.00

Handmade in India: A Geographic Encyclopedia of Indian Handicrafts
$85.00

Cottages ornés: The Charms of the Simple Life
$40.00

Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot
$27.95

Kengo Kuma: Complete Works: Expanded Edition
$75.00

The Houses of Louis Kahn
$76.00

Labyrinths
$15.95

Bernard Maybeck: Visionary Architect
$60.00

Herzog & De Meuron
$60.00

Glorious Gardens: Private Edens of the World's Leading Interior Designers
$74.95

Spring is Here : Embroidered Flowers of the Palestinian Spring
$20.00

The Other Jerusalem: Rethinking the History of the Sacred City
$24.95

All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
$49.00

Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy
$35.00

John Dalton: Subtropical Modernism and the Turn to Environment in Australian Architecture
$39.95

Unrealised Projects: Conversation Series Volume III
$25.50

Through Witnessing: Threading the Critiquing, Making, Teaching of Design
$27.50

Science/Fiction: A Non-History of Plants
$50.00

Raising the Curtain: Operatic Modernism and the Soviet Nations
$50.00

The Materia Archive 2020-2024
$80.00

PRODUCTORA: Some Realized Projects 2014—22
$52.50

Shigeru Ban - Material, Structure and Space
$59.50

Lina Bo Bardi
$70.00

Poul Kjaerholm: Timeless Minimalism
$36.50

Typobiography: Jost Hochuli, The Work of 60 Years
$49.50

Jost Hochuli : Systematic Book Design?
$28.00

ETH: Fiberglass
$40.00

Bruther / Saint Blaise
$17.50

New Standards: Timber Houses Ltd 1940 - 1945
$56.50

Pezo von Ellrichshausen - Window Wall
$95.50

Grounds, Romberg & Boyd: Melbourne’s Midcentury Modernists
$54.50

Rome: An Architectural History
$68.50

Cheating Time: Bruno Munari the archaeologist
$30.00

Wallness – Nature and culture of insulation – Building with Hempcrete
$56.50

The Funambulist No. 58: Return
$13.50

The Funambulist No. 56: Bulldozer Politics
$13.50

Filling Stations: Studies on Types
$37.50

Before, After, & Beyond - Martino Gamper
$43.00

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

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

AV Monographs 268-269: Herzog & de Meuron 2017-2024
$108.50

DOMa 11
$32.50

AMAG 37 Christ & Gantenbein
$70.00

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

Japan Style
$49.95

Louis I Kahn
$150.00
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