Untitled 1970

This untitled piece by Max Bill is like a playful geometry lesson gone rogue, created with an eye for the simplest, most impactful shapes. Look at the colours; red, yellow and blue, bumping against each other. It's hard to tell what tool was used here, or if the artist had any hand at all, and that is part of the charm. There’s something about the way Bill uses these bold colours, it reminds me a bit of a Mondrian. But where Mondrian feels almost architectural in his precision, Bill has a kind of lightness to it, like it could all just float away. The red, particularly, feels like a jolt of energy, grounding the whole thing. It's a conversation with modernism, but told with a wink and a nod. For me, it’s a reminder that even the strictest of forms can hold a sense of play and freedom.