They were reviled ridiculed and ignored. Today the Zurich Concretists-along with Dada-are
considered the most important art movement originating from Switzerland. Circle! Square!
Progress! tells the story of the city's avant-garde movement which is rooted in the Bauhaus
and renewed the formal language of art shaped design and architecture and also positioned
itself politically. It traces its relations to the heroes of Constructivist-Concrete art such
as Johannes Itten Piet Mondrian Sophie Taeuber-Arp Theo van Doesburg and Georges
Vantongerloo and looks at the influences that came from graphic art and advertising jazz
music and dance color theory and mathematics. Max Bill Camille Graeser Verena Loewensberg
and Richard Paul Lohse-a group incidentally thrown together rather than true
conspirators-formed the center of gravity of a milieu that wrestled with critics institutions
and authorities. Lavishly illustrated the book explores Zurich as the habitat of highly gifted
people engaged in lively debates at bohemian cafés drifting in jazz clubs celebrating
excessively at the legendary annual artists' fancy dress ball achieving fame and artistic
triumphs with creative power and a sense of mission. It illuminates the Zurich Concretists'
successes of the 1960s their at times extremely violent quarrels of the 1970s and their
disputes about the beauty of form.
