Artwork of the month April

Max Bill: Strebende Kräfte einer Kugel, 1966/67

Max Bill

* 1908 in Winterthur, † 1994 in Berlin


Strebende Kräfte einer Kugel, 1966/67


80 x 120 x 80 cm

LSK 94.27
Purchased with funds from the Lampadia Stiftung, Vaduz

Max Bill's sculpture strebende kräfte einer kugel (striving forces of a sphere) quintes- sentially demonstrates the formal vocabulary devised by this pioneering proponent of concrete art. In Bill's definition of concrete art, not only the composition and the basic geometrical elements of the work play a vital role but also, and above all, the implemen- tation of idea and concept, in other words, the relationship between idea and form. "Concretion is giving something objective shape that was not visible before, that was not tangible before. Making abstract ideas, relations, thoughts visible: that is concretion."  Since the 1930s, the main preoccupation of this Bauhaus student had been to explore means of visualizing mathematical subject matter and applying mathematical thinking to the making of art. Significantly, Bill did not consider mathematics an exact, static science; to him it was an organic, animate system.

With the help of mathematical models such as axis mirroring, enlargement, reduction and rotation, or ideas such as knot and chaos theory, Bill created equivalents of geometrical forms as points of departure. To express notions of infinity, he made sculptures based on the moebius strip by cutting and twisting metal and putting it together again. Strebende kräfte einer kugel is also based on the mathematical notion of a parallel shift. A granite sphere has been quartered along its central axis; two opposite quarters are then pulled out by half the diameter of the sphere, thereby creating additional surfaces. This equivalent of a sphere strives to separate; it aspires to infinity as a horizontal figure 8.

<b>Max Bill: Strebende Kräfte einer Kugel, 1966/67</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.