Bruno Munari, born October 24th 1907 in Milan, Italy was an artist, designer and inventor who shared major theoretical ideologies and fundamentals to a wide variety of fields of visual arts – such as painting, sculpture and graphic design, amongst others – within the modernism, futurism movements. In addition to this, he also distributed his thoughts on non-visual arts – such as literature and poetry – as well as in concrete art.
“A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.”
– Bruno Munari, Design as Art, 1966.
Bruno Munari, Useless Machine, 1947.
It is evident that the work which Munari created shares ideologies with modernism, as they are works which can be created to this day, without having to conform to modification in any way in order to adapt to the world we live in today. His ability to utilise found objects and materials such as thread, metal, plastic, wood, paper etc. allowed him to create analytical and structural approaches to abstract works of art, marrying geometric lines and colours, and as such is truly a testament to his brilliant design mind. In fact, even the photographs of his work only serve to further build upon the original work. Shadows play a large part in his finalised pieces, accentuating the intense geometric shapes he built.
Bruno Munari, Forks, 1958.
For Munari, it seems as though he was constantly on the search for understanding of how forms and objects worked and how they were initially created. His ‘Forks’ (1958) are a perfect example of the function of his art, where he bent silver forks as a form of expression, even at the expensive of their usability.
Because of this, Munari will forever be regarded as a visionary and the fact that he was once described by Pablo Picasso as “the new Leonardo” is a testimonial to his brilliant mind.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/design-as-art/oclc/267129&referer=brief_results
Dareon Hanlon 