Bruno Munari

Bruno Munari

Bruno Munari (born October 24, 1907 in Milan , Italy ; † September 30, 1998 ibid) was a versatile Italian artist . He worked as a painter , graphic artist and graphic designer , also for commercial graphics . He was also artistically active in the fields of sculpture , film art and industrial design , as well as literature and poetry .

life and work

Bruno Munari was born in Milan but spent his childhood and youth in Badia Polesine . In 1925 he returned to Milan and started working for his uncle, an engineer. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. In 1927, Munari Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the futurist movement began to follow as a second generation participant and showed his work in numerous exhibitions. Some of Munari's works in tempera from 1932 show that Munari had incorporated the futuristic aesthetic into his work. However, a few more examples from the 1930s also show a turn to surrealism .

In his sculpture in the 1930s Munari showed other attitudes, for example a move towards a constructivist aesthetic . He created elegant metal objects as abstract shapes in three dimensions. He also worked with the integration of the environment through kinetic action.

In 1930 he began a partnership with Riccardo Castegnetti ( Ricas ), with whom he worked as a graphic designer until 1938. During a trip to Paris in 1933 he met Louis Aragon and André Breton . From 1939 to 1945 he worked as a graphic designer for Mondadori and as the art director of Tempo magazine .

After the Second World War , Munari focused on industrial design. For example, he designed an alarm clock with rotating half-discs. At the same time he began designing children's books that were originally intended for his son Alberto . An exhibition of the children's books he illustrated was held in the Public Library of New York City in 1952 .

In 1948 Munari founded the group Movimento Arte Concreta together with Gillo Dorfles , Gianni Monnet and Atanasio Soldati .

An important part of his art has always been the attempt to find new forms of expression with ever new materials and different uses of these materials. In 1950 he invented a new projection method and created movable sculptures. Munari began to experiment with light projections through colored plastics. He created compositions for color light therapy. The use of polarized light, special lenses and motorization enabled him to create complex and variable results and led to the production of his first colored light film " I colori della luce " in 1963 with electronic music.

Bruno Munari was a participant in the Venice Biennale in 1962 and 1970. He first used photocopiers at exhibitions to publicize his view of visual communication. He was a participant in documenta III in Kassel in 1964 in the graphics department and also in the 4th documenta in 1968 in the sculpture department , where he shows filigree objects made of metal wire that had an almost graphic character in three-dimensional execution.

In 1988 Munari was awarded an Antonio Feltrinelli Prize .

Literature and Sources

• documenta III. International exhibition ; Catalog: Volume 1: Painting and Sculpture; Volume 2: Hand Drawings; Volume 3: Industrial Design, Graphics; Kassel / Cologne 1964
• Exhibition catalog for the IV. Documenta: IV. Documenta. International exhibition ; Catalog: Volume 1: (Painting and Sculpture); Volume 2: (Graphics / Objects); Kassel 1968
• Literature by and about Bruno Munari in the catalog of the German National Library

Web links

• Examples of his work: design
• The books by Bruno Munari for the Corraini Edizioni
• Examples of his work at MoMA
• Materials by and about Bruno Munari in the documenta archive