Was Bruno Munari a artist ? Certainly. A painter or sculptor ? Both things. Was he a writer ? Yes, and also very good at telling what creativity is and how to carry out a project.
Bruno Munari, simply, was many things: protagonist of artistic research from futurism to the founding of MAC, designer, creator of brilliant books.
And I’m not done! The appeal is missing: pedagogue, advertiser, graphic designer, illustrator, design theorist, inventor, teacher. All this to tell you that it is difficult to keep up with him in the many facets of his career.
Born in Milan on 24 October 1907. Munari, throughout his life, has never stopped producing art and design, crossing currents and anticipating trends . He has collaborated with artists, designers, publishers, giving life to an enormous amount of projects. This is why I was saying, it is really difficult to keep up with such a hyperactive genius. From the birth of his son Alberto, he began writing children’s books. In the following decades, Bruno Munari also tried his hand at designing games to develop creativity and a real pedagogical method.
There must be no art detached from life: good things to look at and bad things to use.
Starting from the 1960s, he then became one of the protagonists of the debate that is being created around industrial design.
< span style = "font-size: medium;"> Receives multiple times the Compasso D’oro Award . Some of his projects have become real cult objects, such as the Cabin: u n ‘ innovative modular structure, light ( only 65 kilos ) and easy to assemble, made with steel rods. E la Falkland lamp < span style = "font-family: Poppins;">, where seven metal rings shape a tubular elastic mesh.
In the Eighties, he also devoted himself to sculpture and installations in steel. He does not lose his taste for irony ( in 1958 he created the “travel sculpture”, a leaflet to recreate a familiar atmosphere when you have to stay overnight in a hotel < span style = "font-family: Poppins;">) and presents the Oils on canvas , a series of paintings created by dripping vegetable oils onto the canvases. He exhibits in museums, organizes editorial projects, writes, participates in debates and lectures until the mid-nineties. He dies in Milan on 29 September 1998.
Playing with art
Bruno Munari has a special relationship with the world of childhood.
As anticipated, in the 1940s he began writing books for children, also designing toys, such as the foam rubber “monkey Zizì” , and the famous Illegible books: books where the focus is on the object and not on the content of the book. They are to touch and see, interacting with original colors, textures and formats.
The object itself becomes content, and soon also a toy for children. children: the Pre-books . Small in size, full of images and tactile elements that do not follow a rigid structure, allow the child to witness a different story depending on how he manipulates the book.
To Munari learning must not be passive, much less the same for everyone. Everyone, guided by their own curiosity, can approach the world through tests and experiments.
Fantasy
Fantasy , one of the most interesting books you can read about creativity.
Published in 1977, is a small masterpiece full of food for thought. Bruno Munari distinguishes between fantasy, invention, creativity and imagination . Then, he relates them to intelligence and learning, bringing the reader a whole series of enlightening examples.
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All his infinite production, from what he created to what he wrote, reveals a great talent in playing with opposites, in overturning the rules to see what can be obtained from them .
As his toy books teach us, the end user must be free to modify what he receives , to interact to get the meaning he deems most useful.
Here is a suggestion for reading
– From what what is born. Notes for a design methodology.
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And remember:
Complicating is easy, simplifying is difficult. To complicate it, just add everything you want, colors, shapes, actions, decorations, characters, environments full of things ... Simplification is the sign of intelligence.