Endless Possibilities: Geometric Abstraction
The UBS Lounge at Art Basel in Basel 2025 features works in the UBS Art Collection by international artists who engage with geometric abstraction.
Max Bill is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Swiss art movement of the post-war period, known as Concrete Art. The architect, designer and theoretician was greatly influenced by modern masters including Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. Bill elaborated his very personal abstract language in the 1930s. Based on mathematical and geometrical principles, he employed basic colors and simple forms. Freed from any symbolical meaning, each work is the result of a purely conceptual approach.
One of Bill’s later paintings, Farbbündel durchzogen (1975–77), belongs to a series in which the canvas is tilted to one side by 45 degrees. It appears as if the work depicts just a section from a much wider composition. The four beams that delimit the blank center seem to continue beyond the surface. Each beam is composed of five stripes painted in bright red, blue, green and orange. On every second stripe, two seemingly floating and vibrating colors meet, creating rhythm and vivacity. The composition is dominated by the white square in the middle that acts as an open window onto seemingly infinite space. With its very limited means, the composition is harmonious and balanced.