© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

His pictures and sculptures are the perfect symbiosis of beauty and rationality. Just about every work that Max Bill produced can be deciphered as a verifiable solution to a mathematical problem, without becoming overladen with meaning. Sculptures like the one depicted, which have no beginning or end since they ingeniously twist space into a surface, were the defining speciality of arguably the most versatile protagonist of the Concrete art movement, which set out to create an art constructed on precise mathematical geometry. Bill attained additional fame as an industrial designer, conjuring up products like the Junghans kitchen clock with timer in 1951 or the "Ulmer Hocker", a multipurpose rectangular wooden stool/table/shelf/desk/lectern in 1954. He once remarked, My aim is to create a shape or an expression that is as impersonal as possible’, meaning that the results of his labours should be ‘as objective as possible.