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biography
BRUNO MUNARI was born in Milan (Italy) in 1907. He died in Milan on 30 September 1998. Munari is a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, industrial designer, as also a theoretician and author of books and treatises of great expositive clarity and divulgative efficacy. He started his activity in 1927 when, with Marinetti and Prampolini, he took part in the so-called "Second Futurism" exhibition at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, attracting attention because of his knowledge of the more lively foreign movements. In 1932 he produced his photograms, which reflect the tendency of Moholy-Nagy and of Man Ray's rayographs. In 1935 his "Useless Machines" obtained a great success; their politely pedagogic intent was combined with the refined irony of their extreme mechanism. His interest in kinetic art and large-scale production of intelligent objects were already implicit in those imaginative creations of the useless. In 1945 he designed the first motor-driven kinetic object, Ora X, with a clockwork movement and constantly changing combination of transparent colored sectors. Also evident was his interest in experimentation and industrial design of an intellectual rather than technological nature. In 1948 he took part in the foundation of the "Concrete Art Movement" (MAC) and exhibited the first "Illegible Books." In 1950 he produced the "Negative-Positive" paintings: geometrical, in flat colors anyone of which could be equally well the background or the foreground, they constituted an important analysis of perceptive ambiguity. In 1952 he issued the "Machinism" manifesto, proposing an organic, total art, in continuous transformation. In the same year he produced his Proof of Arrhythmia, a spring mechanism producing an effect of irregular movement within a regular rhythmic movement. In 1953-1954 he carried out his first research on the use of polarized light. In this period he designed the first fountains in which water is an essential element: following pre-established paths and obliged to flow at different speeds, the water gives rise to a whole series of different effects. Between 1956 and 1958 he produced the "R.T.O.I.," theoretical reconstructions of imaginary objects on the basis of surviving fragments of uncertain origin and serving an unknown purpose. Likewise ironic are his "Travel Sculptures" of 1958, small, light and foldable. In 1962, for Olivetti, he organized the first traveling exhibition of programmed art. In 1964 he produced a series of images obtained with the use of a Xerox photocopying machine. Long interested in the world of children, he produced a number of entertaining and didactic books, some for the birth to six-year-old age group. His now famous Cockpit is an inhabitable structure serving to give a child a sense of his own space. His most recent activities have related mainly to industrial design and teaching. His works have appeared in numerous group exhibitions in Italy and abroad and have aroused particular interest above all in Japan. Munari's way of working, which enables him to arrive at great results with the use of very limited means, is in fact very close to Japanese spirituality. In 1985 he was awarded the Lincei Prize. Munari's books have been translated into many languages. They instruct by means of play, when they are not specific treatises on design and visual communication. They have been used as textbooks by schools and universities.
exhibitions