Max Bill, born in 1908 in Winterthur, Switzerland, completed an apprenticeship as a silversmith at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau under Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and others.  

In 1929 he returned to Zurich where he worked as an architect, painter, graphic designer and sculpture and later as a product designer. From 1932 to 1936, Max Bill was a member of the Paris artists group "Abstraction-Creation"  and developed friendly contacts with Hans Arp, Piet Mondrian and Auguste Herbin. In 1936 he formulated the "Principles of Concrete Art". In 1937, he worked on a monograph of Le Corbusier adn joined the "Allianz", the association of modern Swiss artists. In 1944, Bill founded the magazine "abstrakt konkret", organised an exhibition under the same name at Kunsthalle Basel and obtained a post to teach formal structures at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich.

As the spiritual creator and architect of the Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Ulm and then from 1952 as the rector and head of the architecture and product design departments, Bill attempted to continue the tradition of the Bauhaus in Dessau. From 1967 to 1974, he held a professorship in environmental design at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Hamburg. A number of monumental sculptures are created during the 1980s. Amidst all these areas of activity, the name Max Bill is primarily associated with concrete art and environmental design. 

In addition, as a student of the Bauhaus and contributor of theoretical publications, Bill became one of the most important stimulators of modern-concrete art in post-war Europe. He died in 1994 in Berlin.