From 1924 to 1927 he studied goldsmithing at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Zurich. His influences were marked by the Dadaist and Cubist movements. From 1927 to 1929 he studied art at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he came close to functionalism in the field of design. In 1930 he created his own architectural studio, influenced by Le Corbusier, as a member of the Deutscher Werkbund. A year later he began to form part of the Abstraction-Créaton group in Paris. He also stands out for his theoretical texts such as ‘Die gute from’, 1957 (The good way).

In 1944 he entered the world of industrial design, with the project of an aluminium watch for Junghans, a brand with which he collaborated for several years and which continues to sell his designs today. He is known for having founded the Ulm School in Germany in 1951, together with Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher, an important design school that followed the principles of the Bauhaus. His artistic aim was to defend the functionalism and geometric formalism of objects. This was also related to the belief that forms based on mathematical laws possessed an aesthetic purity that led to universality.

The Fundació Suñol preserves two untitled works by the artist, one from 1977 and the other from 1978. His work was shown in the foundation’s collective exhibition called ‘Diálogos de la mirada’ in 2016.