Bruno Minari Biography
Bruno Munari (1907-1998) was one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Italian art. His activity began in 1926, during the second futurist movement, alongside Severini, Marinetti, Aligi Sassu and Prampolini. In 1927 he participated in the collective exhibition at the Pesaro Gallery in Milan entitled Thirty-four futurist painters. However, he soon developed an autonomous vision that brought him closer to abstract artists such as Fontana, Melotti and Reggiani. In the 1930s Munari abandoned painting to explore the movement of forms in space from a different point of view. His experiments, theorized in the Manifesto of Futurist Aeroplastics (1934), led to the creation of plastic works such as Macchina Aerea, Macchine Sensitivi and Macchine Inutili, exhibited at the Il Milione gallery in Milan in 1933. At the same time Munari dedicated himself to graphics, founding the R+M studio in 1930 with Riccardo Castagnedi and collaborating with the publishers Einaudi, Mondadori, Italgeo and Corraini after the war. In 1948 he founded the Concrete Art Movement and began to explore the world of design thanks to the collaboration with the Danish company. In seventy years of activity Bruno Munari has created works ranging from art to graphics to design to a series of books - the Talking Forks in stainless steel accompanied by an illustrated book with drawings and illustrations of the project (1958); the Concavo-Convex installation (1947); the Negativo-Positivo series of abstract paintings (1963); children's books - Prelibri (1980), Tactile Books and Illegible Books (1957), one of which is exhibited at the MoMA in New York. Also exhibited at MoMA are L'Ora X Clock (1945) and Girondella Kinetic Objet (1965). Munari created iconic design objects such as the Cubo ashtray, which received the ADI Compasso d'Oro in 1954, and the Falkland lamp (1964), both for Danese. Among Munari's other works that have received prizes and recognitions are the foam rubber toy Monkey Zizí (Compasso d'Oro ADI 1954) and the Cabin for Robot (Compasso d'Oro ADI 1979). He also received the Gold Medal of the Triennale di Milano for Illegible Books, the Lego Award for his contribution to the development of creativity in children and the 4th ADI Compasso d'Oro in 1994 for lifetime achievement.
