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Special Award by the Jury of the Critic's Week at the Locarno Film Festival 2008
«Erich Schmid has made an original, personal and affectionate film in memory of Max Bill whose radiant creations as a painter, architect and teacher have had a huge influence on the art scene throughout the world.»
Translation from Folha de S.Paulo, november 23, 2009
Max Bill - O último Leonardo da Vinci do século 20
Seu nome é reconhecido internacionalmente como sinônimo de uma arte visionária pautada no futuro e na responsabilidade social...
In: A Magazine No 24, Barueri, Brazil...
Max Bill is subject of a film awarded at the Locarno Festival, and is featured in Panorama SESC of Swiss Films
The life of the painter, sculptor and designer is minutely analyzed in a production presenting his fight against nazi fascism; 1st exhibit will be held today
By Mario Gioia
The most relevant name of concrete art worldwide, but also an international politician, an activist against totalitarian movements and an interlocutor for artists.
The Swiss painter Max Bill (1908-1994) has all those facets unveiled in the documentary “Bill – The Master’s Vision”, by Erich Schmid, the most important title of Panorama SESC of Swiss Movie 2009, which starts today in São Paulo and will be on exhibit until Dec, 3.
“Bill...” was awarded at the Locarno Festival in the past year (Critics’ Special Mention) and delineates a quite broad panorama of the trajectory of the Swiss painter, sculptor and designer.
Despite of being excessively generous to the artist’s figure – neither his strictness as a professor at Ulm nor his position against the architecture of Brasilia are commented -, the film relies on Bill’s accurate iconography, non-repetitive interviews and the reconstitution of poorly remembered episodes.
“Max Bill is certainly one of the most important contemporary artists, and not only of Switzerland and Europe”, said Schmid, director of the movie.
“Many students worldwide, including Latin America, went to the Ulm School of Design (in Germany) Bill headed, to learn art and design.”
One of those students was the designer Alexandre Wollner, 81, born in São Paulo, who attended classes at Ulm from 1953 to 1958.
Wollner studied at the former MASP Contemporary Art Institute and helped arrange the exhibit of the Swiss artist at that museum, in 1951.
Two years later, the artist himself came to São Paulo and asked Pietro Maria Bardi (1900-1999) to refer students to Ulm and then Wollner was recommended.
“Ulm has changed my life, I has become into another person there”, said Wollner to Folha. “There was no individual project in design at Ulm, everybody participated. That was very different from what I had learned.”
The São Paulo-born designer has just returned from Zurich, where he joined the opening of the exhibit “Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil”, showing pieces from Adolpho Leirner collection, is on display until Feb, 21 at Haus Konstruktiv.
“In Switzerland, Bill is a master. And, in Brazil, his fundamental, decisive role in the dawn of the concrete movements cannot be forgotten”, according to him. MAC-USP shelters one of the artist’s most important sculptures, “Tripartite Unit” (1948-1949).
Schmid said that the documentary also aimed at a dialogue among moments of Bill’s life – the engagement against nazifascism, for instance – and his artistic trajectory.
“I wanted to make clear that, art, architecture and design, at one side; and political, social responsibility, at the other, were intimately bounded.”
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Hamptons, November 12, 2009