Bruno Munari
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| Bruno Munari | |
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| Born | October 24, 1907 Milan, Italy |
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| Died | September 30, 1998 (aged 90) |
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907 – September 30, 1998) was an Italian artist and designer, who contributed fundamentals in many fields of visual arts (paint, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphics) and non visual arts (literature, poetry, didactic) with the research on the game subject, infancy and creativity.
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[edit] Biography
Bruno Munari was born in Milan but spent his childhood and teenage in Badia Polesine. In 1925 he returned to Milan where he started to work with his uncle who was an engineer. In 1927 started to follow Marinetti and the futurist movement, displaying his work in many exhibitions. Three years later he associated 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 press graphic designer for the Mondadori editor, and as art director of Tempo Magazine. At the same time he began designing books for children, originally created for his son Alberto.
In 1948, Munari, Gillo Dorfles, Gianni Monnet and Atanasio Soldati, founded the Arte Concreta movement.
Bruno Munari (Milano 1907 – 1998)
Italian sculptor, painter, film maker and designer.Yes His artistic ambition was influenced by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti whom he met in Milan in the mid-1920s. Munari formally allied himself with the second generation of Futurists in 1927 and continued to exhibit with them into the 1930s. Few works of Munari’s remain from this period, as most were made from transient materials. One extant work in tempera from 1932 (see Tanchis, p. 13) suggests that Munari had fully adopted Futurist aesthetics. Several other examples from the 1930s, however, show a clear debt to Surrealism.
In his sculpture from 1930 Munari adopted a different attitude. Aerial Machine (1930; see Tanchis, p. 21), for example, indicates a move towards a Constructivist aesthetic. This elegant object is a precursor of his Useless Machines, the first of which was executed in 1933. Constructed of painted cardboard and other lightweight materials, they served to liberate abstract forms in three dimensions. Moreover, they were meant to integrate with the surrounding environment through their kinetic action.
After World War II Munari concentrated on industrial design. An early example is X Hour (1945; see Tanchis, pp. 72–3), an alarm clock with rotating half-discs in lieu of hands. In 1963, as part of an effort to bring the best in design to the Italian public, X Hour was produced as a multiple. Other objects by Munari that were not strictly utilitarian were also mass-produced, such as the Flexy (1968; see 1986 exh. cat., pp. 82–3), a flexible metal wire structure that could be set in any number of positions. After 1949 Munari began to investigate Gestalt theory through a series of experimental works entitled Negative Positive, in which he attempted to achieve absolute parity between figure and ground. In Negative Positive (1950; see Tanchis, p. 55), for example, the areas of dark and light are equal.
As early as the 1930s, Munari had been trying out radical innovations in graphics and typography, but it was not until after World War II that he began to design and produce book-objects. His children’s books were simple, provocative learning tools. His books for adults, on the other hand, were useless objects, Unreadable Books, which were meant to challenge the very concept of a book. In 1950 Munari began to experiment with light projection through coloured plastic to create coloured-light compositions. The use of polarized light, special lenses and motorization enabled him to achieve more complex and variable results and led to the production of his first coloured-light film, I colori della luce (1963) with electronic music.
The principle of public access to the means of visual communication was very important to Munari, who believed anyone could produce objects of aesthetic value, given the proper technological advantages. Following this principle, in 1964 Munari began to install photocopiers at exhibition sites, including the Central Pavilion of the 35th Venice Biennale in 1970.
[edit] Awards and recognitions
- Compasso d'Oro award from the ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale) (1954, 1955, 1979)
- Golden medal of the Triennale di Milano for the "Libri illeggibili" book (1957)
- Andersen award as best child author (1974)
- Honorable mention from the New York Science Academy (1974)
- Graphic award in the Bologna Fair for the childwood (1984)
- Award from the Japan Design Foundation, for the intense human value of his design (1985)
- Lego award for his exceptional contribusions on the development on creativity of children (1986)
- Award from Accademia dei Lincei for his graphic work (1988)
- Award Spiel Gut of Ulm (1971, 1973, 1987)
- Honoris causa in architettura from the Genova University (1989)
- ADCI Milan Hall of Fame in Creativity and Communication (1990)
- of the Brera Academy - Marconi award (1992)
- Cavaliere di Gran Croce (1994)
- Honorable partnership of the Harvard University
[edit] Books from Bruno Munari
[edit] Design and visual communication
Design as Art, Discovery of the Circle, publ date?, Discovery of the Square, publ date?
[edit] Research books
[edit] Books for children
The Elephant's Wish, 1945 THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 59-9957
