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As an architect, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer, Max Bill was at home in virtually all artistic genres, building his work on strictly rational foundations. This principle is illustrated by his work »Unit Composed of Three Equal Parts«. Three rods of equal length in the colors red, yellow, and blue are joined in the middle, where their intersections form right angles. Composed of colored, semitransparent acrylic glass, the rods cast colored shadows and, depending on the light conditions, result in a mixing of the refracted light.

Bill’s art was not interested in the reproduction of nature as it existed. Instead, the Swiss artist, who studied architecture at the Bauhaus between 1927 and 1929, employed a constructive formal language to pursue the realization of logical structures and mathematical relationships. He called this translation of abstract thought into a work of art according to mathematical principles “Concrete Art”—concrete because strictly rational considerations were given a manifest form in the construction of a work of art, and thus made perceptible.