Background
Munari was born in Milan, Italy, on October 24, 1907.
1929
Milan, Italy
Inauguration of the exhibition Trentatrè Futuristi held at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, October 1929.
1949
Posing with his marble mural, Milan, in 1949.
1951
Bruno Munari presenting his works in 1951.
1952
Artists of the MAC group in 1952.
1955
Bruno in one of the rooms, Panarea, in 1955.
1966
Bruno Munari at the San Varese Mill in 1966.
Bruno Munari.
Bruno Munari.
Bruno Munari and his book Nella Notte Buia.
Bruno Munari chatting in the studio, the 1930s.
Bruno Munari drawing with light in the 1950s.
Bruno Munari in his studio.
Bruno Munari painting.
Bruno Munari playing with light, the 1960s.
Bruno Munari with glasses.
Bruno with some of his "workin' bidness" in the 1940s.
Munari and his Sculture da viaggio, the 1960s.
Bruno Munari with his works.
Bruno Munari working.
Bruno Munari with a child.
Bruno Munari with spoons.
Bruno Munari.
Young Bruno Munari.
Bruno Munari.
Bruno Munari with his "Aerial Machine".
Bruno Munari at 6 years old.
(When Lucy the giraffe from Lisbon travels, she brings alo...)
When Lucy the giraffe from Lisbon travels, she brings along a large crate with Peggy the zebra inside, who has a trunk with Leo the lion inside, who carries his own packed valise.
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1980
artist designer sculptor writer
Munari was born in Milan, Italy, on October 24, 1907.
Bruno Munari spent his childhood and teenage years in Badia Polesine.
When Munari turned eighteen, he left Badia Polesine for Milan to work with his uncle. In 1927 he joined the Futurist movement led by Marinetti, which displayed his artworks in several exhibitions. It was led by an Italian poet and editor, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. This movement glorified the contemporary concept of future, violence as well as technological advancement. Bruno Munari also followed the motto dictated by the movement and contributed numerous highly propagandist collages to Italian magazines.
In the following years, the artist made an association with Riccardo Castagnedi (Ricas). Until 1938, the two worked together on numerous graphic design projects. During this time, he also met some of the outstanding French writers and poets, including Louis Aragon and André Breton.
From 1938 to 1943 Mondadori hired him as a graphic designer. Concurrently, he was landed a job at the Tempo Magazine and Grazia, serving as an art director. He later began designing children’s books, creating colourful and eye-catching illustrations.
His sculptural and abstract-geometrical artworks were not as valued at the time of their creation as in the following years. Due to the fact that his futurism inspired works were largely based on transient material, very little of them have been preserved. Although the Futurist movement produced notable artist and artworks, Munari disassociated himself with the movement after the Second World War because of its proto-Fascist values.
During the late 1940s, Bruno Munari diverted his attention from decorative abstract art to industrial design. One of his early works includes X Hour based on rotating half-disc mechanism instead of moving hands. In 1948, Munari, Gillo Dorfles, Gianni Monnet and Atanasio Soldati, founded Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC). It was an Italian movement for concrete art. During the 1940s and 1950s, Bruno Munari produced many objects for the Italian design industry, including light fixtures, ashtrays, televisions, espresso machines, and toys. Moreover, he investigated the Gestalt theory conducting a series of experiments which he titled as Negative Positive.
The post-World-War II period was the most productive for Munari as he experimented with several art forms employing ingenious ideas. Later in his life, Bruno Munari developed book-objects, transforming children’s books into attractive learning instruments. His books included textured, tactile surfaces and cut-outs to make it easier for children to learn about tactile sense and colour through kinesthetic learning. One of his most well-known interventions was his Tactile Workshop series, where Murani worked with groups of young children to experiment with touch as an exploration of material’s properties and artistic concepts.
Munari also experimented with projecting light through plastic. In 1963 he made a coloured-light film, I colori della luce, accompanied by electronic music.
(When Lucy the giraffe from Lisbon travels, she brings alo...)
1980(Bored with being themselves, the elephant, the bird, the ...)
1945(A series of peek-a-boo pictures leads the reader on a sea...)
1980Futurist
Untitled (Graphic Composition)
Macchina inutile
Untitled (Graphic Composition)
Pirelli, Suola Coria
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Tribute to Santomaso
Untitled (Graphic Composition)
Negativo-Positivo
Composizione
Untitled 1
From Black to White Through Violet
Cosmic Map
Untitled (Graphic Composition)
Curva di Peano
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Campari
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Curva di Peano
Negativo-Positivo
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Quotations:
"To complicate is simple, to simplify is complicated. ... Everybody is able to complicate. Only a few can simplify."
"A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense."
"Progress means simplifying, not complicating."
"The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing."
"When drawing the sun, try to have on hand coloured paper, chalk, felt-tip markers, crayons, pencils, ball point pens. You can draw a sun with any one of them. Also remember that sunset and dawn are the back and front of the same phenomenon: when we are looking at the sunset, the people over there are looking at the dawn."
"Only he who has a different visual opening can see the world in another way and can pass on to his neighbour the information required to broaden his field of view...let us get used to looking at the world through the eyes of others."
"Creativity: that which wasn't there before, but which can be made simply and completely."
"An object should be judged by whether it has a form consistent with its use."
"When the artist observes nature... it is as if nature communicated, through the sensitivity of the artist at that moment, one of its secrets."
Bruno Munari had a strong intellect, culture, and inclination towards the arts.