Bruno Munari. My Futurist Past - Estorick - London 2012 by MunArt

The exhibition Bruno Munari: My Futurist Past aims to document the poetic genesis of one of the most original and creative Italian artists of the twentieth century from his participation in the Futurist movement to his work of the early 1950s through the involvement of important private collections, including the Miroslava Hájek Archive and the Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive. Considered by F. T. Marinetti to be the most promising young artist of the Futurist group active in Milan at the end of the 1920s, Munari participated in numerous exhibitions organised by the movement in Italy and abroad, as well as the Venice Biennali and Rome Quadriennali. However, from the beginning he assumed an autonomous position, exploring the possibility of taking art beyond the static and two-dimensional confines of painting. In 1930 – some years before Calder – he created his first mobile, which he entitled Aerial Machine. In the early 1930s he created the Useless Machines, kinetic works that allowed him to project abstract forms onto space and to create complex installations that were changeable in terms of their shapes, colours and tones. In 1946, at the Parisian Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Munari presented his Concave-convex – probably the first installation in the history of art. This consisted of a suspended, mathematically-complex, mobile that aimed to represent infinity through a finite form. The chance movements of this curved metal net threw abstract images onto the walls to create a visually and emotionally seductive environment. From the 1940s onward Munari constructed clockwork mechanisms and other types of spring-driven devices – objects which from 1951 he is to term Arrhythmic Machines – that entailed dynamic interactions between the aesthetic components and the viewer, who manually engaged with the mechanism. In the 1940s and ‘50s, Munari was one of the protagonists in the emergence of modern graphic design in Italy. He served as a consultant for the main Italian publishers such as Bompiani, Mondadori, Rizzoli and Einaudi, as well as for several companies and a number of magazines including Tempo, Grazia, Domus and La Lettura. In 1948, together with Gillo Dorfles and Gianni Monnet, Munari founded the Movimento Arte Concreta (M.A.C.) – a movement promoting open collaboration among artists and which provided a theoretical base for the convergence of different art practices, thereby contributing to the definition of a new role for the artist in contemporary society in accordance with the intense development of industrial design. During the 1950s, by means of a slide projector and transparent mixed-media compositions, Munari created luminous environments and immaterial paintings of monumental size which he termed Direct Projections. In 1953 Munari was the first artist to employ polaroid filters, inventing the Polarised Light Projections, where the manual or automatic rotation of the filters modified the colour spectrum of the composition. Bruno Munari – il perfettissimo – became a point of reference for entire generations of artists and both graphic and industrial designers in Milan during the post-war economic boom. Munari’s personal contribution was not limited to art and theory but explored in a concrete manner all the opportunities at the disposal of the visual artist in a modern and complex society founded on industry and communication.

BRUNO MUNARI

Born 24 October, Milan. After a few years his family moves to the Polesine area southwest of Venice where the artist spends his youth. 1926 Having returned to Milan, Munari immediately comes into contact with members of the Futurist movement. 1927 Starts to exhibit his work in the collective shows of the Futurist movement in Italy and Europe. 1929 Along with Severini, Russolo, Depero, Balla, Prampolini and others, he participates in the collective exhibition Peintres Futuristes Italiens held at the Galerie 23 in Paris. Contributes to the foundation of the Lombardy Radio-Futurist Group, who make their debut with a group show in Varese. 1930 Produces the Aerial machine and begins to design his Useless Machines. Participates in the XVII Venice Biennale. 1932 Participates in the XVIII Venice Biennale. 1933 Photograms, photomontages and photo-collages exhibited in the Exhibition of Futurist Photography organised by Marinetti in Rome. 1934 Munari exhibits his first Useless Machines in Futurist exhibitions, attracting the attention of Depero and Marinetti. Participates in the XIX Venice Biennale. 1936 Participates in the XX Venice Biennale. 1937 Illustrates Marinetti’s Poem of the Milk Dress. 1940 Exhibition of Metaphysical objects at Milan’s Galleria del Milione, where the poet Salvatore Quasimodo, who will later win the Nobel Prize in Literature, also presents his work. 1942 Publishes the book Munari's Machines. 1945 Using the spring-driven movement of an alarm clock, Munari designs the kinetic ‘multiple’ X Hour, which will be produced by Danese of Milan in 1963. 1946 At the first Paris Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, an exhibition focusing on concrete art, Munari exhibits the environmental piece Concave-convex. 1947 Participates in the exhibition Abstract and Concrete Art in Milan, the first international show to be organized in Europe since the end of the war. 1948 Participates in the foundation of the Movimento Arte Concreta (M.A.C.) with Monnet, Dorfles and Soldati. Displays Useless Machines and the Concave-convex at his solo exhibition at the Galleria Borromini in Milan. Begins the series of paintings entitled Negative-positives in which the distinction between foreground and background is annulled, creating a sense of perceptual instability. 1949 For the Italian company Pirelli, Munari designs Meo the Cat, a posable polyurethane foam toy. 1950 Continuing his work with M.A.C., Munari produces his Light Projections by employing transparencies. Solo exhibition of Illegible Books (Libri illeggibili) at the Salto bookshop in Milan. 1951 Begins the Arrhythmic Machine series, in which chance is introduced by the use of clockwork elements. Solo exhibition of Found Objects at the Galleria dell’Annunciata, in Milan, where the collage Fragments of Posters found in Rue Monsieur le Prince, in Paris, on a Wooden Fence, a bit Washed-out by Rain in displayed. 1953 First Direct Projections in public in Milan, at Studio B24. Begins to employ a polaroid filter to produce Projections of Polarised Light. 1955 Exhibition Two graphic designers with Alvin Lustig at MoMa, New York, where Munari presents the Illegible Books and Direct Projections. 1956 Begins to produce the series of works Theoretical Reconstruction of Imaginary Objects Based on Residual Fragments of Uncertain Origin and of Unknown Usage started in Panarea in 1955 with the invention of an Imaginary Museum of the Aeolian Islands. First Polarised Projections in Milan, at Studio B24. 1958 Creates the Speaking Forks and exhibits his Travel Sculptures - portable sculptures made in foldable colour cardboard – at Galleria Montenapoleone in Milan. 1959 Starts to produce the series Fossils of the Year Two Thousand, compositions obtained from industrial detritus. Presents the ‘multiple’ Continuous Structures in Paris, for the Edition M.A.T. produced by Daniel Spoerri. 1961 Exhibits in group shows of kinetic art organised by Pontus Hulten at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek. 1962 Organises the exhibition Programmed Art at the Olivetti showroom, in Milan. 1964 Munari becomes the first artist to experiment with the creative possibilities of Xerox machines, producing unique artworks entitled Original Xerographs by means of the movement of images during the photocopying process. 1965 Munari designs a Fountain of 5 Water Drops for Tokyo. Produces the limited edition kinetic work Tetracone. 1966 Participates in the Venice Biennale. Solo show at the Howard Wise Gallery, New York. 1967 Holds a series of lectures in visual communication at Harvard University, Cambridge (USA). Publishes the Illegible Book N.Y. 1 for MoMA. 1968 Produces the unlimited edition ‘multiple’ Flexy for the Danese company 1969 Participates in the event Urban Field held in Como, with the performance Making the Air Visible and the creation of polarised projections onto moving screens. 1974 Starts the series of works Colours in Peano’s Curve, inspired by the work of the famous Italian mathematician, at Galleria Sincron in Brescia. 1980 Solo exhibition Oil on Canvas at Galleria Sincron. 1981 Produces aerial structures entitled Threadweights with tubes and cables for the Galleria Sincron. 1986 Solo room at the Venice Biennale with the series Oil on Canvas. Anthological exhibition at Palazzo Reale, in Milan. 1988 Anthological exhibitions at the Museum of Jerusalem and the University of Genoa, where Munari is conferred with an Honoris Causa Degree in Architecture. 1990 For the Galleria Sincron Munari produces the series of works entitled High Tension, sculptures linked to the tensostructures produced during the 1930s. 1995 Solo exhibition at Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich. 1997 Solo exhibition entitled Installations at the Museum of Modern Art in Klenova (Czech Republic). 1998 Munari dies in Milan on 30 September.

MY FUTURIST PAST

1907

BRUNO MUNARI MY FUTURIST PAST

Miroslava Hájek was born in Brno (Czech Republic) where she studied art history. In 1968, whilst in Italy following the repression of the Prague Spring, she was tried and condemned as an opponent of the regime. From 1970 to 2000 she ran the Studio UXA art gallery in Novara. During this period she collaborated with Bruno Munari, as an art historian, on the formation of a collection of works able to represent the full span of his creative journey. Luca Zaffarano has a degree in Information Technology, is a collector of Italian art and is the author of a documentary project dedicated to Bruno Munari’s work, available at http://www.munart.org. Pierpaolo Antonello (University of Cambridge, UK) is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College. He specializes in contemporary Italian literature, culture and intellectual history, and he wrote extensively on Futurism and on the relationship between literature and techno-science. His current research project deals with the relationship between art and technology in 20th century Italy. Jeffrey Schnapp (University of Harvard, USA) is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and director of metaLAB@Harvard. A cultural historian with research interests extending from antiquity to the present, his most recent books are The Electric Information Age Book (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), and Italiamerica II (Il Saggiatore, 2012), co-edited with Emanuela Scarpellini. Also forthcoming in 2012 are Digital_Humanities (MIT Press), a book co-written with Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, and Todd Presner, and Modernitalia (Peter Lang), a collection of essays on 20th century Italian cultural history. The Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, created in New York in 1985, aims to explore Italian history of the twentieth century through art, design, advertising and photography. Due to its considerable number of works it is regarded as Italy’s major private historic archive of Italian art. For more than twenty years it has fulfilled its mission by organising cultural events in collaboration with a number of major international museums.

The exhibition catalogue has been generously supported by the Italian Department, University of Cambridge.

www.estorickcollection.com www.munariestorick.org www.silvanaeditoriale.it

SilvanaEditoriale

BRUNO MUNARI

MY FUTURIST PAST Miroslava Hรกjek Luca Zaffarano

SilvanaEditoriale

Published on the occasion of the exhibition: Bruno Munari: My Futurist Past Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art 39a Canonbury Square London N1 2AN 19 September - 23 December 2012

Silvana Editoriale Produced by: Arti Grafiche Amilcare Pizzi S.p.A.

www.estorickcollection.com

Direction: Dario Cimorelli

Exhibition curated and catalogue edited by: Miroslava Hájek in collaboration with Luca Zaffarano

Art Director: Giacomo Merli

Exhibition organisation and production: Estorick Collection of Moderm Italian Art Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

Production Coordinator: Michela Bramati

Project co-ordinator: Luca Zaffarano Translations: Christopher Adams, Estorick Collection Catalogue design: Laura Predolini

Editorial Assistant: Emma Altomare Iconographic office: Alessandra Olivari, Silvia Sala Press office: Lidia Masolini, press@silvanaeditoriale.it

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holders and the publishers.The publishers remain at the disposal of those copyright holders whom it has not been possible to contact. © 2012 Silvana Editoriale S.p.A. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan; © 2012 Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive; © 2012 Historical Works Miroslava Hájek Archive; © Giacomo Balla by SIAE 2012 All texts and images by Bruno Munari © Bruno Munari. All rights reserved Maurizio Corraini S.r.l. Photographic credits: © Davide Biancorosso; © Miroslava Hájek; © Laura Luppi; © Roberto Marossi; © Ernani Orcote Cover image Bruno Munari in his studio with the Concave-convex Image published in Civiltà delle macchine, March 1953 (Rome: Ed. Finmeccanica) The organisers wish to thank the following individuals and organisations for lending their works: Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive - New York; Rosilla Gambini Comerio; Paolo Tonini; L’Arengario Studio Bibliografico - Gussago; Galleria Valente Artecontemporanea - Finale Ligure; Jacqueline Vodoz and Bruno Danese Foundation - Milan; Roberto Zeni; Nicola Papani; Nicoletta Gradella. And all those collectors who wish to remain anonymous.

Self Portrait, 1930 watercolour on paper 4.5 x 5 cm Private Collection

A special thanks to all those who have enthusiastically supported this project, and have actively been involved in it by offering their assistance, expertise and passion. The authors particularly wish to thank: Christopher Adams; Angelo Benecchi; Beppe Bonetti; Maria Fede Caproni; Marco Ciccolella; Dario Cimorelli; Manuela Cirino; Roberta Cremoncini; Italian Department University of Cambridge UK; Laura Predolini; Alexia Rizzi; Margherita Zanoletti; Daniel Zucconi.

page

author

7 Introduction Roberta Cremoncini 9

Bruno Munari, Icon of Modernity

Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive

Bruno Munari, Futurista Miroslava Hájek

Art

83 The Visible Hand Jeffrey Schnapp Pierpaolo Antonello

year

page

Contents

171

Documents

172 175

The Painter of ‘Cones’ 1927 (Il pittore dei ‘coni’)

182

The Story-teller of Campari 1932 (Il cantastorie di Campari)

190

Atmosphere (Atmosfera) 1932

192

The Poem of the Milk Dress 1937 (Il poema del vestito di latte)

196

What Useless Machines Are and Why 1937 (Che cosa sono le macchine inutili e perchè)

204

La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia

205

La Lettura 1939

The Naked Prompter 1929 (Il suggeritore nudo)

My Futurist Past, Present and Future

105

Graphics

149

The Maximum with the Minimum

Luca Zaffarano

218

Munari’s Machines 1941-42 (Le macchine di Munari)

165

How Could it be Done Differently?

Alberto Munari

220

Galleria Borromini catalogue, Milan

224

The Discoveries of Bruno Munari 1953 (Le scoperte di Bruno Munari)

228

Captions

1935

206 Notebook 1930-40

1948

Bruno Munari is a true icon of Italian art and design whose influence has been international in scope. Despite this, it is rare to see examples of his work – a fact which makes this exhibition such a special occasion, and one that the Estorick Collection is thrilled to be hosting. Munari’s curious absence from museums and galleries is perhaps partly due to the fact that his was an art of ideas which resists straightforward categorisation, moving freely between myriad styles and media, such as geometric abstraction, photomontage, kinetic sculpture and graphic design. However, whilst he never allowed himself to be restricted by his artistic affiliations, Munari’s irreverent, playful and experimental approach was deeply rooted in the aesthetics of Italy’s first avant-garde movement, as the title of this exhibition suggests. Indeed, although many artists who had been associated with Futurism between the 1920s and early 1940s continued to explore the movement’s aesthetics throughout the post-war period, Munari was perhaps the most faithful custodian of its original anarchic spirit and ambition. Futurism aspired to nothing less than a ‘reconstruction the universe’– not only by means of attempting to evoke its elemental forces through abstract imagery (the challenge set artists in a famous manifesto of 1915), but also by encouraging creative intervention in all aspects of everyday life. An essay of 1950, in which Munari exhorted artists to leave their studios and engage with practical realities in order to transform and beautify the world, vividly recalls the words of the painter Giacomo Balla, written in 1918: Any store in a modern town, with its elegant windows all displaying useful and pleasing objects, is much more aesthetically enjoyable than all those passéist exhibitions which have been so lauded everywhere. An electric iron, its white steel gleaming clean as a whistle, delights the eye more than a nude statuette […]. Furs, travelling bags, china – these things are all a much more rewarding sight than the grimy little pictures nailed on the grey wall of the passéist painter’s studio. Whilst other ex-Futurists continued to recycle the movement’s vocabulary of mechanical and geometric forms in their curiously nostalgic paintings, Munari’s work encapsulated the truly revolutionary message of Futurism: that art should be a joyful and integral element of daily life – not something detached, austere and elitist, arbitrarily cut off from the real world by the artificial borders of the frame. Munari’s transformation of this concept from a utopian dream to a concrete reality represents his true legacy. This exhibition presents some truly exciting works, charged with a spirit of surprise and wonder that reflects Munari’s consistent aim to awake a sense of discovery and amazement in the spectator. I would like to express my thanks to Massimo and Sonia Cirulli for developing the idea of this exhibition with us, and to Miroslava Hájek for sharing her knowledge about Munari’s work and for generously contributing a large number of loans to the show. I am indebted to Luca Zaffarano for his meticulous and tireless work in making sure all the parts of the exhibition and the catalogue worked together. My thanks also go to Pierpaolo Antonello and the University of Cambridge for supporting the publication of this catalogue. We are naturally grateful to all the lenders for their generous loans. Last but not least, I wish to thank Alberto Munari for his contribution to the catalogue and his support for the project. As always, my gratitude goes to the Arts Council of England for organising Indemnity for the exhibition, and to my colleagues for their contribution to its realisation.

Roberta Cremoncini Director

Bruno Munari, Icon of Modernity Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive

The Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive has for some considerable time been concerned with Italian art of the twentieth century, its aim being to narrate – through images – the transformation of Italian society as it evolved during the early twentieth century, two world wars, the boom years of the Sixties and beyond. The fil rouge of this narrative has been the evolution of those key artistic forms through which a country expresses itself, both in terms of its fears and aspirations and in celebrating its achievements. This research has touched on the visual arts in every form: from poster art to photography, advertising, design and painting and sculpture, in the context of the various movements that succeeded one another during these years, many of which were truly innovatory. In this adventure as collectors we have attempted to document the evolution of a taste that has created a truly ‘Italian style’, synonymous with elegance and sophistication. In the process our path has several times crossed that of the transversal – and somewhat enigmatic – figure of Bruno Munari: a Futurist artist, graphic designer avant la lettre and consultant for a number of major Italian companies, who in our opinion represents a true icon of modernity. What has struck us most has been his great ability to think ‘outside the box’, to provoke the viewer (although never to the point of excess) through a poetic and often ironic or humorous approach, and a clever use of strong and often unusual colours. However, these qualities characterised every aspect of his personality, not just his artistic activity. It is amusing to remember an anecdote dating from 1955 when, unable to attend the inauguration of the exhibition ‘Art and Advertising’ organised by the Galleria Montenapoleone in Milan, he sent the following telegram: ‘Art and Advertising STOP Strike Public Attention With Poetry STOP Cease Punching In The Eye STOP.’ We shall here attempt briefly to define some of the areas in which the encounter with Munari has proved decisive for us: the relationship between art and graphics during the second period of Italian Futurism, and the birth of abstract art; the relationship between art and industry during the years of economic expansion, and his role as a ‘theorist of the project’, laying the foundations for the birth of Italian design. During the 1930s and 1940s Munari experienced and absorbed the Futurist adventure with youthful enthusiasm and an irreverent spirit, and through his graphic work introduced markedly innovatory elements into each of his compositions. In 1930 he founded R + M – one of the first design studios to be established in Milan, along with the better-known Studio Boggeri, with whom he collaborated on occasion – and began designing many Futurist books, such as Marinetti’s Poem of the Milk Dress (1937). This included several innovative aspects such as transparent printed inserts, elements that were later to feature in his Unreadable Books. He also contributed drawings, collages and photomontages to magazines such as La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, L’Almanacco Letterario Bompiani, Natura, La Lettura and L’Ala d’Italia. In 1933, the latter published one of Munari’s most emblematic

photomontages entitled Misunderstood Poet, in which the metaphor of nature as an engine (the universe) is made evident – through an analogy with the motor reproduced at the centre of the composition – by the anatomical details at the lower right (the human body as machine). The poet, with an approach characteristic of Leonardo, attempts a synthesis between nature and science, and perhaps for this reason remains misunderstood. During the 1930s many artists were invited to collaborate with Italian industry as advertising consultants during the years of greatest industrial expansion. One of the earliest contributions made by Munari to this field was The Story-teller of Campari of 1932, a short book of poems accompanied by illustrations that was produced in a limited edition. During the Fifties, Munari collaborated with other major national firms such as the oil company AGIP and the Terni Steelworks. In addition, he participated in group exhibitions that sought to explore and promote dialogue between artists and industrialists. In 1952 the Concrete Art Movement – of which Munari was one of the most important theorists – presented a display of ‘Studies for Concrete Forms in the Automotive Industry’, while at the Turin Motor Show of 1954 it organised an exhibition concerning ‘Colour for Car Bodies’. A number of art galleries began to devote great attention to the poster, including those ‘rejected’ as too aesthetically innovative. In 1951 Milan’s Galleria dell’Annunciata presented an exhibition of AGIP posters complete with a full scientific committee, competition and awards. More famous is the exhibition of 1955 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, curated by the poet-engineer Leonardo Sinisgalli and entitled ‘The Plastic Arts and Mechanical Civilisation’, in which works of art and industrial machines were compared with one another on an aesthetic basis. In the ‘Manifesto of Mechanisation’ published in 1952, Munari distanced himself from the image of the artist at his easel with these words: ‘No more oil colors but oxyhydrogen flames, reactive chemicals, chromium-plating, rust, anodic stains, thermal changes. No longer the canvas and frame, but metals, plastics, rubber and synthetic resins.’ In the magazine AZ directed by Mario Ballocco, founder of the Gruppo Origine, Munari wrote about the necessity for artists to respond to a public that ‘needs a nice poster, a book cover, the decoration of a store, attractive colours for the home, the shape of an iron or a sewing machine’. In this regard, one thinks of the designs for textiles published in this volume, where certain motifs recalling fractals anticipate aesthetic experiments based on the use of Peano’s Curve. This is the dawn of Italian design. ‘To strike with poetry’ is the great message of modernity bequeathed to us by Bruno Munari. His poetic art, which had its roots in a Futurist past and found its most complete application in the years of intense industrial development, reveals to us an artist who came out of the studio and onto the streets, engaging with business and contributing through a poetic language to the cultural and aesthetic development of a nation.

Bruno Munari, Futurista Miroslava Hájek

If one assesses the value of artists in terms of their historical importance rather than the market value of their works, Bruno Munari is undoubtedly one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. His work was always innovative – and in many ways revolutionary – although those superficially acquainted with it might consider it somewhat fragmentary and spread too thinly across too many different experiences. However, through an attentive analysis of his oeuvre the fundamental coherence of Munari’s research is revealed, and the meaning of these various experiences emerges. Munari first began to move in artistic circles during the late 1920s, adhering to the ‘Second’ Futurist movement led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – who immediately considered him to be the most brilliant figure of the new generation. This phase of his work remains little known, despite the fact that it contained the seeds of his future aesthetic concerns and witnessed the emergence of ideas that were to preoccupy him throughout his career. Simultaneously, Munari conceived his ‘useless’, ‘aerial’ and free-standing machines, his anthropomorphic drawings, his gestural paintings, his abstract-geometric works entitled The Frame Too, experiments with tactilism and performance projects such as the choreographic score of 1935 Dance on Stilts. All these seemingly disparate works have discernable traits that link them together. For example, Dance on Stilts appears a three-dimensional transposition of his Illegible Writings of Unknown Peoples. However, after the Second World War Munari never spoke to anyone in Italy about his Futurist experiences. He would pass over, or find a way to evade, direct questions – the consequence of which being that many were convinced he wished to deny his Futurist past, or at least that he no longer had any works from the period; yet this was not true. It was simply a self-defence policy in the context of a prevailing attitude that equated Italian

Untitled 1930

Futurism with Fascism. This was simplistic reductionism, considering that ‘First’ Futurism had enjoyed its most important moment before and during the First World War and, moreover, that Marinetti’s links with Fascism were neither total nor unconditional. In truth, during the 1930s the Second Futurist movement was certainly not privileged by the regime, as illustrated by the small number of exhibitions that were organised at this time, and their humble settings. The decidedly anti-German sentiments of Futurism also certainly counted against the group. I discussed this topic on several occasions with Munari, managing to get him to explain his experiences to me, and to show me works from the period in question. He was happy to find an interest on the part of an art theorist who, among other things, had spent her own youth in a totalitarian state and who could therefore understand its dynamics. I believe this was why I was able to convince him, after a long period of time, to exhibit his Futurist works in an exhibition I curated at UXA Studio d’Arte Contemporanea in Novara entitled Projects and Objects (1986). To orient ourselves within his oeuvre it is necessary to follow its principal routes: namely, the exploration of the perceptual and sensorial faculties, and the search for ways to overcome objective limitations. Through this analysis one can identify the connecting thread linking all his works. That is to say, in the works of Munari one can always note the same visual language, one continuously elaborated in every possible variation with the utmost simplicity and the organic quality of a specific and known thought. The artist was well aware of this coherence within his work and indeed it was he – albeit later – who defined the differences between art and craft, style and styling.

Caricatures 1930

The Difference between Art, Craft and Design, and the Use of the Creative Method The sketch entitled Motorcyclist of 1927 – one of the artist’s earliest works – was folded into four since Munari carried it in his pocket in order to be able to use it as an example during the heated discussions then taking place between young Futurist artists. Drawn on both sides of the paper, one image represents a speeding motorcycle, the other a sketch of the same image as the basis for a possible publicity campaign for Pirelli. The work is testimony not only to the ongoing debate within Futurism concerning the question of dynamism and the expression of movement, but also reveals that by this stage Munari was already distinguishing between the language of free, artistic creativity and that of applied art, for which a more methodical approach is necessary. Munari was later to analyse this issue in his books. However, the adhesion of Munari to the Futurist movement was to become complex. Compared to the majority of his peers, who had returned to painting, Munari embraced the initial Futurist conception of a dynamic and ‘total’ art, aiming to engage all the senses. Unlike many of his colleagues, whose work simplified complex ideas during the evolution of the image, Munari’s work surprised the viewer by starting from an essential concept and going on to explore it from all possible perspectives and in every possible form. This means that any approach to his aesthetic research must be multi-directional. Munari himself stated that it is necessary to think in at least three dimensions.

Abstract Composition 1931

The Concept of Art Developed in Space From the beginning of his career Munari aspired to transcend the expressive instrument, himself, and the limits of humanity. The break with the idea of an art limited only to painting, sculpture or an object of some kind occurred to Munari as early as 1930 when he began to create his first Useless Machines. These were also the first attempts to conceive of art as an environment: experiments to which one might even apply the term ‘installations’. There have been many discussions concerning the dating of these works. The originals no longer exist; even the Aerial Machine exists only in the mass-produced version of 1971. The debate focused primarily on the question of whether the idea of a suspended and mobile work had first been conceived by Alexander Calder or Munari. This was a rather irrelevant matter since the two artists approached it in very different ways. Moreover, as Munari often observed, objects such as wind chimes – which are suspended from the ceiling and generate sounds by their movement – have existed for centuries. The controversy was resolved when, as part of the 1995 exhibition ‘Making the Air Visible’ in Zurich, documents were exhibited showing that Munari had created the first Useless Machine in 1930 – three years before Calder. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is that the idea had occurred to both artists independently since at that time neither was aware of the other’s research. Calder and Munari only met after the war, and became such good friends that they exchanged works. The idea of a suspended, mobile object came to Munari in 1930 when he and Ricas (Riccardo Castagnedi) were renting premises in Milan for their graphic design studio R + M. At the end of the corridor was an empty room that Munari wanted to use for the construction of an artwork. In the middle of the room, he hung an object that represented a machine of the simplest kind. He told me that lit the object in the dark room in such a manner that

Abstract Composition (platforms) 1931

it would create a play of shadows on the walls. Aiming to associate the piece with the philosophical concept of the uselessness of the artwork, he chose the paradoxical title Useless Machine. This title is often misunderstood, being interpreted in an ironic sense. This misunderstanding occurred almost immediately because, in the show where they were first exhibited, his Useless Machines came into conflict with the exaggerated enthusiasm of the Futurists for mechanisation. However, Munari had no intention of ridiculing the concept of the machine, but simply wanted to transpose it into an artistic context, as is clear from his ‘Manifesto of Machinism’ of 1938, which was published in the Bollettino del M.A.C. in December 1952. Paradox and a Taste for the Absurd The use of paradox was central to all aspects of Munari’s activity, not only that of an artistic nature. He employed it in order to undermine banal stereotypes and to stimulate mental agility. In visual terms it was reflected in his juxtaposition of geometric shapes and organic forms. In fact, this is the key to interpreting his anthropomorphic or zoomorphic drawings, which on the one hand explore the ambiguity of perception – leading to the spatial uncertainty of the Negative-positives as well as abstract designs called Ancestors, in which one is able to discern a face – and on the other leads to an aesthetic use of writing, seen as a positive stereotype and an integral element of the work. The emphasis that Munari placed on paradox is clear if one considers of the titles of his works: Concave-convex, Negative-positive, Illegible Books, etc. This aspect of his work is often overlooked or misinterpreted, despite encapsulating Munari’s ability always to see things from opposite sides and to explore each topic from different perspectives.

Self Portait + Globe 1932

Writing and Visual Communication The theme of writing, or even the alphabet itself, was extremely important for Munari. It was present in his earliest works, drawing on the Futurist experience. Writings often complete his work by moving the visual concept to different levels of reading. In this perspective, the ABC Dadà of 1944, comprising a series of images dedicated to the letters of the alphabet, can be interpreted as a declaration of intent. Not only do the compositions present his entire expressive vocabulary of organic materials, gears, real objects, prints of objects, patterns and nets of various fabrics, but the illustrations are complemented by verses - word games dedicated to each letter. In this work, then, it is possible to explore his entire phraseology, but it is also important to note the influence of Enrico Prampolini, the only Italian member of the Dada movement, who was an important reference point for Munari. Munari told me that the work was born almost by accident. He had been commissioned to create an alphabet book, but when he completed the project he realised that instead of a book he had created a work of art. So he put aside the ABC Dadà and made another book following a suitable design methodology. Again, this incident shows how important it was for him to distinguish between art and design. Munari summarised the relationship between the two forms of creativity with the phrase ‘one thing leads to another’. Sometimes, when creating a piece of design or graphic work, he would take inspiration from a work of art that he had produced on an earlier occasion. A case in point is the way in which his idea for the construction

Seated Man + Solar Apparition 1932

of Meo Cat and Zizì the Monkey can be related to the Insects created some years earlier. Or, vice versa, how the perforated paper that he began to use in his graphic design (an example of which is included here in a drawing of 1935, see p. 107) led to the creation of his ‘unreadable books’. Again, when he was commissioned to create advertisements for a ball-point pen manufacturer, Munari chose to exploit its unique characteristics – the ability to produce an unbroken line – in a series of drawings entitled Birographs. Munari explored the potential of writing throughout all his fields of interest. For instance, he investigated the extent to which it is possible to compress and reduce the letters of a word without compromising legibility, as well as tested the limits of the human faculty of perception in the process of identifying the subject represented, allowing the user to complete a picture using their own imagination and intuition. Using Humble Materials to Discover new Sensory Dimensions Munari’s Tactile Board of 1938 was not conceived as a picture – unlike the first such piece created by Munari in 1934, following Marinetti’s example – but comprises a series of materials arranged along a piece of timber, over which ones fingers walk, becoming marked by the rough surface of sandpaper, enlivened by an encounter with the movements of small velvet see-saw, slowed down by a surface studded with nails, then speeded up once more, gliding over a strip of plastic. The whole arrangement is completed by annotations indicating how to proceed, as if it were not only a sensory journey but a musical composition. At that time it was rather unusual to use materials such as cloth, fur and fragments of gears or clock mechanisms in the creation of artworks, yet they occur frequently in the work of Munari, representing a desire to expand the

Skeleton of an Animal 1932

artist’s range of expressive possibilities. The use of humble materials proposed by Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero in their 1915 manifesto ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ influenced Munari to the extent that he even considered vegetables to be possible vehicles for artistic expression. The body of the free-standing Useless Machine of 1934 is, in fact, constructed using the hull of a dried gourd.

In his ‘Manifesto of Machinism’ Munari wrote: ‘Artists must take an interest in machines, abandoning the romantic brushes, the dusty palette, the canvas and the stretcher; they must begin to learn the anatomy of the machine and the mechanical language, understand the nature of machines, distract them in order to make them work erratically, create works of art with machines themselves, with their own parts.’

Humble or found materials, either sensual in nature like feathers, fur or scraps of cloth, or ordinary, such as organic matter, industrial sheeting and mechanical elements – used either for their tactile quality or their structural characteristics – distinguish all of Munari’s artistic work. It must be emphasised, however, that he always used them in a precise and restrained manner, employing only the bare essentials required to identify the material. It seems that even in this case he wanted to explore the minimum conditions necessary for recognition. This expressive minimalism led him to develop a new technological spirituality, and to humanise the machine.

As in the earlier anthropomorphic or zoomorphic drawings, Munari succeeds here in managing the paradox of abstract and figurative forms, hybridised with a mechanism, obtaining a result that gives the idea of a living, domesticated being. The audience, attracted by the mechanism of the object, desires to engage with it and wind it up, inevitably becoming part of the work: indeed, almost a co-author.

Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism of the Machine

To involve the audience in the creation of art was the strategy used by Munari in order to make the public aware of modern aesthetic problems. Like many intellectuals of his generation, he realised that visual culture was far from finding acceptance among the masses and seemed incomprehensible to many, often conditioned by preconceptions or a lack of education about such matters. Although Munari was not naive, in the sense that he had no illusions about human nature (something illustrated by his statement ‘art is for everyone, but not for all’) he developed several strategies that aimed to capture the interest of the individual and encourage him or her enter the complex world of the visual arts, fostering empathy and immediate perception. One of Munari’s bestknown techniques in this regard was his employment of the mechanics of the game – a characteristic often used by his detractors to belittle his work. The nature of play is such that it leaves no-one indifferent and speaks to

Munari’s Insects, constructed with metallic wire covered in cloth, were to inspire the later objects called Sensitives, made from pieces of coloured wood and springy wire. In a certain sense they are distinct from, yet complement, his Useless Machines, being elementary mechanisms that tremble at the slightest touch of the hand. During the early 1950s this line of experimentation led him to construct the Arrhythmias: spring-driven mechanical objects that had to be manually wound up. Munari transformed the predictable and repetitive movement of the clock mechanism by incorporating it into structures that affected its functioning, leading it to produce a succession of unexpected and surprising movements, jolts and jerks.

Abstract Composition in Space 1932

Involvement of the Spectator

Turnip Man 1932

everyone’s inner child, awakening the desire to learn in a joyful manner. Many adults, however, believe that play should not be part of a work of art, and this prejudice sealed the fate of many of the objects which Munari gave away in his youth to people who disposed of them after an initial burst of enthusiasm, as one does with old toys. These interactive objects, which the users engaged with in an almost physical way, were an effective means of including the viewer in the world of art. In exhibitions that I have curated, I have witnessed scenes of real excitement. However, the idea of a total art was increasingly crystallising in Munari’s mind, even being explored in the opposing contexts of the virtual and the real. I still remember with pleasure an object that had always been in Munari’s studio, and which he referred to as the sculpture for all the senses: a coloured, scented, soft and elastic sphere that also produced a range of sounds. Alongside this research Munari began to develop the concept of art as a space of which the viewer inevitably formed a part: by entering into it one conditions it, rendering it changeable and always different. As he often said to me: ‘I try to create works without spatio-temporal limitations, where images are formed and destroyed, and it does not matter if they physically exist, but that they enter one’s memory as an emotional experience.’ Connections with the European Avant-Gardes Munari was very familiar with the international avant-garde art of the time. Despite what is now generally believed it was almost easier to obtain cultural information then than it is today. He was particularly interested in Russian Futurism and that of Central Europe, and many of his works responded to matters raised by artists in other countries, particularly those relating to issues of space, time and light.

Composition 1935

Munari’s first drawings – figures of conical form – evoke the works of Malevich or Depero. Particularly in relation to his early work, one can reconstruct the broad spectrum of his reactions to new ideas and new interpretations of the issues tackled by the avant-garde. He was extremely attentive to what was happening in the art world and it is a dominant characteristic of his work that much of it appears to constitute a response to aesthetic problems posed by other artists. Munari understood art as a kind of dialogue, a form of communication – and not only with his peers. Some Useless Machines are a response to the spatial dilemma of El Lissitzky’s paintings, for instance, whilst his abstract paintings and works such as The Frame Too, begin to try and create a visual ambiguity stimulated by the experiments of Hans Richter, Paul Klee or Mondrian. There are several obvious similarities between his works and those of Man Ray, references to forms characteristic of the work of Hans Arp, and many correspondences with the research of the Bauhaus. Wassily Kandinsky is often cited as an influence, but Munari certainly took inspiration from others. In fact, he criticised Kandinsky’s conception of space, describing his abstract compositions as indecipherable still lifes floating in indefinite voids. Munari nurtured an iconoclastic spirit in relation to the classical-modern idea of art, according to which one must always return to a stereotyped, recognisable and identifiable artefact – a product necessary for business ends. He ranged with ease from abstraction to the figure, from matter to the word, and from painting to the object. The connections between his various ideas are regulated by the consistency of his aesthetic philosophy. Coming to conceive of the artwork as environment anticipated an expressive attitude that was to become widespread following the Second World War. This creative freedom already seems projected toward the third millennium.

Anthropomorphic Drawing 1935

Exploration of Various Forms of Movement One of the most important themes of Munari’s work is that of movement, and it is no coincidence that Frank Popper numbered him among the pioneers of kinetic art.1 Munari analysed movement in all its visual aspects, distinguishing between the representation of it, the reality of it and the illusion of it. He explored movement both in its virtual aspect and in reality: drawings and paintings of machines, motorcycles and figures in motion being contemporary with his mobile objects. He often attempted to combine chance movements with those generated intentionally. However, his most important revelation related to illusory movement, present in all his works concerning the study of the possibilities of polarised light. Although he used the electric motor for some of his objects in a marginal fashion, the most essential movement for him remained that which was spontaneous and random, such as a change in the air, flowing water, or even the intervention of the spectator. This predilection stemmed from an inner wisdom gained during the course of his youth, and was clearly derived from Zen philosophy. Expansion and Ambiguity of Space Munari’s research intended to make the invisible visible, and to explore spatial intersections. In his works we frequently find such intersections in the form of an X, often combined with the number 3, symbolising the relationship with space. Not coincidentally, the net is a constant presence in his work. For example, we find it in works of graphic design such as the cover for Marinetti’s Poem of the Milk Dress, as well as his objects and even

Anthropomorphic Drawing 1936

the structure of some of his paintings. In his work the net symbolises the shape of space-time geometry, but also the different structures of nature. In his continual oscillation between the organic and inorganic, the figurative and the abstract, he aspired to find the connections that link each element of the universe. Although conceiving a new way of being an artist, Bruno Munari never denied his connection with classical aesthetics and engaged in a dialogue with the art of the past, using precise mathematical and harmonious relationships, although questioning the possibility of establishing what determines the context and the creation of the artwork. Munari reinterpreted the sixteenth-century idea of the artist-scientist for the modern era. He had a deep understanding of geometry and was aware of the latest mathematical theories and the newest technology, incorporating it into his research. However, he was able to interpret this knowledge in his work in a poetic form. Not for nothing did he love to repeat the Japanese saying that ‘we must know the rules in order to break them’. From the beginning of the 1940s he sought to develop the concept of the Useless Machine by incorporating spinning movements, using the spring-driven, manually-wound mechanism of a gramophone. In one such work the moving part turns like a carousel with a descending motion, whilst at the bottom three geometric forms made of folded and polished aluminum are attached to rotating rods. Today the material has become slightly tarnished but it is still possible to observe the reflection of the surrounding environment in these moving forms – deconstructed, mutable and multiplying itself in the surfaces of the geometric elements. Munari was never satisfied with the result and kept changing the rotating parts, only considering the work complete in 1953. He made another attempt to include the environment within the work in this manner, of which only photographic evidence remains: one of the first Useless Machines, which included a polished, reflective sphere.

1 F. Popper, L’arte cinetica (Turin: Einaudi, 1970) pp. 133, 151, 185, 216.

Surreal Drawing 1938

From the Projection of Shadows to Direct Projections Attuned to contemporary issues, Munari also addressed the question of the use of electricity in the work of art. One must remember the significant role played by lighting not only in his Useless Machines but also his other suspended objects, which through this means revealed patterns formed by their shadows. At the end of the 1940s Munari created a work-environment. In a dark and possibly ‘white cube’-style room, light radiated through a piece of industrial metal mesh, folded according to a mathematical precept: a work Munari entitled Concave-convex. The object, moved only by air currents or the touch of the visitor, created moiré patterns not only within itself but – most importantly for Munari – cast a complex, dynamic and mutable image onto the walls. The object was a two-dimensional square, curved in such a manner as to become threedimensional, and expanded to infinity through the shadows that were thrown into the surrounding environment, suggesting the notion of the curvature of space. The obvious relationship of this object with the principles of non-Euclidean geometry did not lessen the atmosphere of mystery that permeated the environment, created by a skilful juxtaposition of form and structure, shadow and light. Munari exhibited the Concave-convex in 1946 in Paris, but the fact that it was returned to him disassembled and folded up – that is to says, useless – is evidence that the work was completely misunderstood. In 1947 Munari reconstructed the object and also produced variants of rectangular form, experimenting with more complex environments. As was typical of his research, he explored the expressive possibilities of the various configurations, studying

Design for an Environment 1954

them from different points of view. Inspired by the problem and of fractals and nature, he created analogies between organic and artificial structures: for example, the veins of dried leaves and metallic honeycomb mesh; or sticks of bamboo inserted into nylon which, held taut by the rigid internal scaffold, formed a cloud-like structure. Painting with Light Light is an essential element of the creative concept, which not only has the traditional symbolic content, but is above all a powerful sign for the arts and the modern world. As an initial experiment, Munari began to ‘paint’ light, as evidenced by several works of the early 1940s such as Yellow Points of 1940 and 1942. However, after a series of such paintings Munari no longer found it sufficient to depict light (in a similar manner to his elaboration of the theme of movement) and began to explore the possibility of using light directly. With his Direct Projections Munari used electric light as the equivalent of a painterly medium, using a small image enclosed within the frame of a glass slide which, when projected, resulted in the creation of monumental, dazzling frescoes. Such a technique enabled Munari to reconstitute the structure and intensity of colour, emphasising the space and volume of the luminous forms. These projections express one of the concepts dearest to Munari – that of ‘making something out of nothing’ – which he stated was the meaning of his surname in Japanese. In this case, mixed-media works placed between two pieces of glass were dematerialised by light and reconstructed in an impressive size. The important principle here was not only the transposition of miniature, physical, mixed-media

compositions, paintings or collages through immaterial light, but the intention of making ‘murals’ able to fill rooms with colours, or paint either a dome or the facade of a building with light. Munari subsequently introduced a kinetic element using bifocal slides, or projecting his slides in a rhythmic sequence, creating something approaching a fragmented film. But perhaps the solution that satisfied him the most was that discovered through the use of polarised light.

Polarised Projection 1953

In his exploration of the expressive possibilities of electric light Munari was undoubtedly inspired by the pioneering experiments of other artists. Finding Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator of 1930 too mechanical, he was instead attracted to the pianos and organs designed by artists such as Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) that envisioned the use of a ‘light keyboard’, combining colour and sound in the performance of his work Prometheus. Slightly later, the Russian Futurist Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné (1888-1944) created his Optophonic piano, which generated sounds and projected rotating images onto the walls or ceiling by directing a bright light through a series of filters, painted and revolving glass discs, mirrors and lenses. The keyboard controlled the combination of the various filters and discs. The variations were controlled by a photoelectric cell and the pitch by a single oscillator. The instrument produced a continuous diversity of sounds, accompanied by rotating kaleidoscopic projections, the colours and rhythms of which were strictly integrated with the music. The Czech Futurist Zdenĕk Pešánek (1896-1965) and Erwin Schulhoff (1884 -1942) created audio-visual sculptures in an attempt to blur the boundaries between the realms of music and the visual arts. With his Spectrophon piano, Pešánek realised a colour-generating keyboard and an apparatus for projecting kinetic compositions of coloured light onto screens, creating original, abstract, luminous paintings. For Munari, the notion of using the slide projector as a means of creating his light installations was a development of ideas explored by another Czech Futurist, Jĭrí Kroha, whose architectural designs for houses for the poor incorporated the projection of works by major artists onto the walls of the buildings to obviate the need for hanging actual works of art. Confirmation of the connections with the ideas and research of these artists came with the presentation of A Spectacle of Light, designed by Munari for a 1979 production of Scriabin’s aforementioned symphony. Munari’s contribution to the theme and originality of this production was marked by the fact that it did not involve the use of colored filters or other devices, the colours of the light being determined solely by the different light sources used. The Colors of Light Munari used the technology of powerful slide projectors to create environments painted with light, anticipating contemporary video installations. This idea became the starting point for deeper research into the use of electricity as a light source able to dematerialise the artwork and reconstruct it in a more evanescent form. During the 1950s Munari’s experiments with polarised light led him to attain the goal he had set himself. His discovery of the ability of Polaroid filters to break light down into the colors of the spectrum opened up vast possibilities for experimentation. In this case, the compositions sandwiched between two pieces of glass were created with folded, transparent sheets that were sometimes also scratched, with a Polaroid filter as a background. Only later did black geometric elements enter into the compositions. Munari projected these slides turning another Polaroid filter in front of the machine. For this purpose he designed a rotating device, but was troubled by the

resulting kaleidoscope effect, and so often turned the filter manually. Light and colour, electric light used as an alternative to the artist’s pigments, but also as an allusion to the colours of the spectrum scattered by a Polaroid filter, almost recalls a musical composition, and its temporal extension. The evolution of the illusory movement in these Projections of Polarised Light serve to give an idea of the depths of space in constant transformation. We must also highlight the fact that in them the illusory movement also creates virtual volumes and spaces that are perceived by displaying what might be called parallel space. Through such work Munari anticipated by at least half a century current visual concerns. Unfortunately, many works have not survived Munari’s Futurist period – partly because at that time the commercial value of his works was not foreseen, partly because having decided to solve an aesthetic problem Munari felt no need or motivation to repeat it, and partly because many of his works were destroyed or have been lost. However, his major works remain, albeit often only in one example, and can still adequately illustrate his creative process and the dynamics of his thought. It is interesting to observe how that which was once cutting edge has become neglected, yet the past anticipates the future, as a decisive factor, since the present is always transient. When works such as those of Munari are produced, they are met with a sceptical and wary eye, and are often undervalued or not even considered as art. Many of Munari’s opinions and choices brought him into direct conflict with the structures of official art. Despite this he has become a legendary figure and a model for many subsequent generations of artists, to the extent that he has been described as a Leonardo da Vinci for the twentieth century.2 The story of Bruno Munari is always an opportunity for knowledge and inspiration.

P. Hulten, Una magia più forte della morte (Milan: Bompiani, 1987), p. 17.

Art

1. Motorcyclist (verso), 1927

2. Motorcyclist (recto), 1927

3. Cosmic Map, 1930

4. Cosmic Map, 1930

5. Walking Man, 1931

6. Man in Movement, 1931

7. At the Double, 1932

8. Useless Machine, 1934

9. The Frame Too, 1935

10. The Frame Too, 1935

11. Seated Man with Several Hats, 1935

12. Composition, 1935

14. Dance on Stilts, 1935

13. Two Figures in Movement, 1938

15. Composition, 1935

16. Tactile Board, 1938

17. Photocollage, 1935

18. Moreover, nothing is absurd to those who fly, 1930s

19. Misunderstood Poet, 1933

20. And thus we would set about seeking an aeroplane woman, 1930s

21. Organic Composition, 1940

23. Sinuous Form (Negative-positive), 1940

22. Abstract Composition, 1939

24. Geometric Composition, 1945

25. Abstract Composition, 1948

26. Geometric Composition, 1945

27. Two Red Forms, 1947

28. Sensitive no. 7, 1947

29. Negative-positive with Curved Lines, 1950

30. Concave-convex, 1947

31. Useless Machine, 1947

32. Abstract Composition, 1948

33. Abstract Composition, 1948

35. Abstract Composition, 1948

34. Abstract Composition, 1949

37. Untitled, 1950

36. Abstract Composition, 1949

38. Insect, 1940s

39. Insect, 1940s

40. Arrhythmia (Red Flags), 1951

41. Useless Machine (Arrhythmic Carousel), 1940-1953

42. Arrhythmia (Butterfly and Little Snake), 1951

43. Arrhythmia, 1951

45. Direct Projection, 1950

44. Yellow Points, 1942

46. Negative-positive, 1950-87

47. Negative-positive, 1950-87

48. Red and Black, c. 1940

49. Geometric Forms, c. 1930

50. Useless Machine, 1945

51. Negative-positive, 1950-77

The Visible

Bruno Munari devoted his life to animating letters.

But M was no professional typographer. Letter forms were for him toys and tools, signs and things, atomic particles and molecular compounds. They were the building blocks of a cosmos in which combinatory play is the signature of life. ABC Dadà is just 1 of 6 major letter projects undertaken within the arc of Munari’s 6-decade career as an artist, designer, and educator. Only 1 copy was made. It was prefigured by Abecedario di Munari (1942): a square-format primer pairing letter forms with related words and images. It was followed by 2 later letter books: Alfabetiere – Facciamo assieme un libro da leggere secondo il metodo attivo (1960), in which swarms of collaged letters, wedded to nonsensical nursery rhymes, invite additions on the part of readers, and Bruno Munari’s ABC (1960), a playful primer composed in English. 1 + 2 = 3. ABC Dadà finds a multitude of echoes in Munari’s other subsequent work, from the construction toy ABC con fantasia (1961), with its generative letter segments, to his 70s and 80s educational laboratories for children, with their exercises on signs as designs and designs as signs, to the Alfabeto Lucini (1987): a fantastic alphabet crafted to commemorate the sixty year anniversary of his longtime collaborators at the Stamperia Lucini. ABC Dadà + 3 = 4. Precedents and echoes aside, ABC Dadà remains something of an anomaly; an X factor within Munari’s trajectory from Futurism to the multimodal design practice that he developed in the postwar era. Dating from 1944, it goes unpublished in the very year that its creator churned out no less than 7 children’s books for Mondadori.

Y so? Was it a gift destined for a friend? A 1-off experiment intended for publication only by the imaginary Lady Esther publishing house? Was it too close to the 1942 abecedarium or too far removed from the storytelling vein of Toc toc. Chi é? Apri la porta (1945) to interest the likes of commercial publishing houses like Mondadori or Einaudi? Was it truly crafted for children given, for instance, that the noun hegeliano, employed to illustrate the letter H, is not exactly a honey-coated breakfast treat for tots? Munari states only that the work was ‘commissioned’ but that, when completed, he realised that he had created an artwork and not a book.♣



ABC Dadà, 1944 mixed media 21.5 x 31.5 cm

Abecedario di Munari (Turin: Einaudi, 1942); Alfabetiere – Facciamo assieme un libro da leggere secondo il metodo attivo (Turin: Einaudi, 1960); Bruno Munari’s ABC (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1960). On Munari’s overall career as a book designer see G. Maffei, Munari – I libri (Milan: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2002).

 Some of these works are documented in G. Camuffo, M. Piazza and C. Vinti, TDM5: Grafica italiana, Triennale Design Museum (Mantua: Corraini, 2012) and G. Bianchino, Bruno Munari: Il disegno, il design, Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (Mantua: Corraini, 2008).

♣ On this topic see M. Hájek’s essay ‘Bruno Munari, Futurista’ in the present catalogue.

An artwork for children or for all? ABC Dadà ends with XY Zazà, Zazà being a character from 1 Chronicles 2:33 whose Hebrew name signifies ‘belonging to all.’

Language understood as a medium that can be freely moulded as graphic/acoustical/kinetic stuff unconstrained by grammatical or semantic laws. Language that can be built, danced, sculpted, acted out.

* *

Artwork or book, belonging to children or to all, what is certain is that, in harmony with Munari’s ludic approach to design and pedagogy, ABC Dadà throws a monkey wrench into the task of mastering one’s ABCs. That monkey wrench is branded with the deviant D that = Dadà. Why Dadà and not Dada? Unaccented, the word is absent from Munari’s pre-ABC Dadà work, despite conspicuous debts to everything from Picabia’s imaginary machines to Man Ray’s photograms to Dada’s poetics of collage. Accented, it surfaces in ABC Dadà’s title like the magnetic pointer of a creative compass, angled in the direction of 2 Ps: Paris and Prampolini –2 Ps that between 1925 and 1937 were one.

2=1 The years in question are those during which Prampolini resided in the French capital and served as Munari’s main conduit to Dada and Surrealism, organising shows, building friendships, serving as an ambassador between the second generation Futurists and the local avant-gardes. (Ties to the Hexagon are confirmed by the tricolor title page where and flutter like flags against the backdrop of ). This Parisian/Prampolinian genealogy appears to locate ABC Dadà squarely within the family tree of what a recent MOMA show has dubbed the ‘ecstatic alphabets’ of the avant-gardes. Ecstatic alphabets have their roots in words-in-freedom experiments like Marinetti’s Les mots en liberté futuristes with their kaleidoscopic typographical arrays and free-expressive orthography. They draw additional sustenance from acoustical-graphic probes extending from Hugo Ball’s Lautgedichten to Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate (Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa [laut] Bee bee bee bee bee - - - - - - - - - - Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Zee zee zee zee zee) to Surrealist glossolalic dabblings. They attain their pre-digital apogee in postwar settings familiar to Munari, from Concretism to Letterism to Fluxus. The fierce foliage on this family tree is varied. But there’s a common trunk: an approach to language Qua fab lab.



Tacked on almost like an arrière pensée, the gallic D that completes the title of ABC Dadà is only part of the Munari story. The main story line remains bound to scholastic challenges of an elementary sort: learning A B Cs, minding one’s Ps and Qs, mastering Reading wRiting & aRithmetic. These Munari takes on with affinities for notions of active, experiential and integral learning being theorised by educational thinkers such as Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget and reformers associated with the Gestalt movement, not to mention with a lingering love (shared with the likes of Max Ernst) for the material culture, popular illustrated press, and children’s literature of the second half of the 19th century. Ecstatic or not, Munari’s alphabets are eclectic. They do not aim to fully explode the world of writing or to reduce all language to graphic/acoustical/kinetic matter. Rather, they set out to explain and explore, approaching tasks of instruction with a gentle Surrealist-inflected Dada touch. Assemblage, collage, photomontage, the disjunctive use of cuts and pastes all find their place in Munarian abecedaria alongside conventional illustrative techniques. They are placed in dialogue with some of the richest veins of 19th and early 20th century didactic play and experimentation, exemplified by masterpieces like Edward Lear’s Facsimile of a Nonsense Alphabet, composed in 1846 (but published in 1926), rhyme books like Jules Lemaître’s ABC Petits Contes (1919), and rebus games à la Lewis Carroll. The resulting primers are functional primers (or, at least, functional enough). They deliver standard letter sequences paired with nursery rhymes, riddles, rebuses, illustrations, clippings, cutting and real-world keepsakes. They also manage to be Futurist fast, Dada daft and Surrealist swervy (and a bit mischievous & fun). The lesson plan proposed by ABC Dadà is both serious and unserious, conventional and unconventional. Structured around single page units, it includes no bleeds, no overlaps, no carryovers: just a title page + 21 centered layouts each composed of a precut, embroidered , a label with a typewritten alliterative ditty, an etched figure (most are cropped from 19th century sources), and a cluster of found objects. All are illustrative of the letter being brought to life.

Dexter Sinister (D. Reinfurt, S. Bailey), Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language, edited with A. Keefer (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012).

The objects are small and lie nearly flat, casting only the slightest of shadows in this shallow, unheroic theater of the everyday. They are arrayed along a perpendicular axis s o a s

Andrea serves as the book’s alpha [α]; the name Zazà as the book’s omega [Ω]. There are 9 male and 10 female characters in between. ½ are children and ½ are adults. The older-younger balance is carried over onto the lexical level. Some of Munari’s typewritten clips fall unambiguously within the field of children’s nonsense poetry:

t o h o n o u r t h e h o r i z o n t a l i t y

[Francesca facing out of the fenestration amidst fake flowers and photographs has become fond of the fine little scissors] or

[Gigi plays games with reeds on his knees in the glacially gelid grottos]

Other clips employ more intricate vocabulary in the service of rigorous alliterative regimes

[Ubaldo is a humid human who has a unctuous hitch up and all his utensils unified]

o f t h e

a c t o f r e a d i n g. Every letter in ABC Dadà has an portrait and a proper name (except for the haughty H doubly impersonated by an hidalgo and a young Hegelian). The name

[Zzshsh, Zzshsh, lets play our wood whistle while Zazà is zapping mosquitos with her paw]

Others mix verbal registers straddling the worlds of child and adult, like the ditty that accompanies the letter A, with its 18th century frock coat:

Sewing is well represented: by buttons, a skein of green wool, a pink knit rectangle, a black ribbon, white lace borders, various fabric samples. So are other arts and crafts like watch making (balance wheels, clock faces), mosaics (an octagonal micro-mosaic pin), woodworking (wood fragments), drawing (a pencil, assorted pen nibs), music (a flageolet flute) and finger painting (a polychrome handprint). The inclusion of so many real-world domestic objects and collaged-in print materials launches ABC Dadà out of the orbit of standard abecedaria into that of Victorian scrapbook and keepsake books. Yet the keepsakes are in the service of a disjunctive countermnemonics.

[Andrea adores little angels and attaches assorted annulets to Ada’s frock coat]

For all of its air of everydayness and domesticity, the Munarian scrapbook forms no cohesive portrait of a private world. It never gels into a Collection. Incongruities prevail, both subtle and overt.

A final category ventures out into purely adult terrain either with respect to vocabulary

The nuclear family whose life ABC Dadà documents includes an hidalgo as well as nannies and grandmas; its zoo features mosquitoes as well as dromedaries and hippos. Metal pen nibs and pencils frolic with typewritten and

[Hem, hem, says an honorary Hegelian, hem. An hidalgo replies: ahh! (Ho hum!)]

industrially printed words.

and hand-drawn images hover side-by-side with photographic positives and negatives. or with respect to content Innocent pebbles, sticks and shells dance in and out of suggestive scraps of lace, veils and fur, and even a bustier (in what amounts to a replay of Munari’s own tactile tables from the early 1930s). Soft and sensual fabrics collide with sharp-edge fragments of woven wire (a piece of fencing?).

[Ida liquefies gears and has an illicit fling with the imprint of her indivisible fingers.] The clippings are paired with fragments of domesticity as well as with items commonly found in children’s pockets (like sticks, stickers and stones).

Camillo appears in the company of five small seashells and an encircling cord. Dante is seen with a child’s pencil drawing of a dromedary and a pair of dice.

Here is an abecedarium made up of letters that are themselves things: things found and glued, things in the midst of other things, things that make you think. *

Three ivy leaves have been glued onto Enea’s page along with a commercial blank label and snip of an elastic waistband. Artificial flowers flank Francesca, along with scissors from a sewing kit and frames from a contact sheet.

In this work about writing nothing is hand-written (aside from Munari’s signature on the title page). There is little that is properly typographical.

Artwork + book, primer + playground wrapped into a single package, ABC Dadà extends an invitation to ‘reading’ to children and adults. But within the playhouse of its pages, reading casts aside its autonomy in order to recover its place within a vaster family of forms of making and doing.

Refreshed and renewed many times over in the course of Munari’s remarkable career, the invitation tendered by ABC Dadà is to read in much the same way that we

Animate, Build, Crop, Dance, Eclipse, Fold, unGlue, Highlight, Imagine, Juggle, Knot, Listen, Mix, Nail, Observe, Palp, Question, popRivet, Smell, Tear, Upend, Ventriloquise, reWrite, Xerox, Yodel, and Zoom. JeffreyTSchnapp Anno domini 2012

My Futurist Past, Present and Future Pierpaolo Antonello

Bruno Munari’s relationship with Futurism is a complicated one. This is true not only in historical terms, but particularly in relation to Munari’s aesthetics vis-a-vis the formal and experimental legacy of Futurism. What is crucial here is not to attempt to document Munari’s degree of adherence to Futurist programmes or his level of involvement with certain projects proposed by the Futurists, but rather to seek to understand the development of his aesthetic creed and his artistic experimentation as it departs from the polymorphous Futurist production. The few historical accounts available of Munari’s early career show, on the one hand, a relationship of proximity to the Futurist movement, and on the other a gradual distancing from and eventually a full emancipation from Marinetti’s group. In both his sketchy autobiography and in the various interviews he gave in the 1970s and ‘80s, Munari showed a tendency to evade questions which referred to his ‘Futurist years’, and to downplay his initial attachment to the movement, characterising it as a phase in his career that had only historical significance. As Meneguzzo pointed out ‘Munari [did] not want to risk that all he [had] done over more than sixty years of work be classified as a derivative of Futurism for the mere fact of having participated – from 1927 to 1936 – in a few exhibitions of the movement [...], as a member of the group’.1 In fact, Munari claimed – and the oxymoron was consciously and ironically chosen here – that he had had a ‘Futurist past’.2 One cannot forget that Munari met the Futurists at the very beginning of his career, in a preparatory phase of his artistic development. When, in 1926, Munari moved from his Veneto home town Badia Polesine to Milan, he was nineteen and he almost immediately joined the Futurists. Futurism was one of the driving artistic forces in Italy and possessed some of the most active groups in the country, particularly in Milan. One may wonder if there were opportunistic, self-promotional reasons for joining the Futurist group, although later Munari ironically commented

1 M. Meneguzzo, Bruno Munari. Opere 1930-1995 (Bergamo: Fumagalli, 1995), p. 7. 2 G. Dorfles, ‘Capriole lessicali’ in B. Finessi (ed.) Su Munari: 104 testimonianze, 152 inediti di Bruno Munari (Milan: Abitare Segesta, 1999), p. 192.

Bombardament of New York 1942

L’Ala d’Italia 1934

on Marinetti’s abilities as an artistic entrepreneur: ‘Marinetti used to summon us imperiously […] although the art shows he organised were held in the summer, during the low season of art galleries’.3 Although he produced some works which appear quite problematic from a political standpoint (the collages for L’Ala d’Italia and Tempo or Bombardament of New York, 1942),4 and in some of his writing of the period – for instance the Manifesto of the Twenty-five Year-old Futurists (1934), co-signed with Furlan, Manzoni, Castagnedi and Regina and then published as Technical Manifesto of Futurist Aeroplastics5 – he paid lip service to Fascism (like many other Italian intellectuals and artists at that time). The ideological motivations behind Munari’s artistic activities are quite tenuous, and cannot be lumped together with the general Futurist attitude towards Fascism, particularly in the light of Munari’s very democratic and anti-elitist idea of art, as discussed years later in books like Design as Art.6 Munari’s temperament was also quite removed from the bombastic rhetoric and clownish elements of Futurist propaganda. Riccardo Castegnedi, Munari’s assistant and business partner in the 1930s, remembers the total lack of vis polemica in Munari and the fact that he watched the Futurist ‘brawls’ and ‘riots’ with a detached smile.7 It is likely that Munari felt drawn towards the Futurists because of the heterogeneity of their methods, their ability to mix different art forms and techniques, their exploration of new media and new avenues of expression, all of which were quite congenial to his own conception of art, and because of their links with the cultural industry (design, advertising, graphics, architecture, etc.). Munari once claimed in an interview that for him, at the early stage of his career, ‘it was a matter of “trying things out”, of wanting to know as much as possible’.8

3 Meneguzzo, p. 10. 4 Cf. J. Schnapp, ‘Bruno Munari’s Bombs’ in J. Mendelson (ed.), Magazines, Modernity and War (Madrid: Textos, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2008), pp. 141-159. 5 In C. Salaris, Aero… futurismo e mito del volo (Rome: Le Parole Gelate, 1985), p. 36. 6 B. Munari, Arte come mestiere (Bari: Laterza, 1966). 7 R. Ricas, ‘Via Carlo Ravizza 14’ in Finessi, p. 63. 8 C. A. Quintavalle, ‘Intervista a Bruno Munari’ in G. Bianchino (ed.) Bruno Munari: Il disegno, il design (Mantua: Corraini, 2008), pp. 34-39, 243.

Munari was indeed a conspicuous example of an artist who wished to integrate various sources of inspiration into his artistic vocabulary and to channel those influences into his rigorous artistic research. Munari was in fact influenced by and he borrowed elements from many artists and artistic trends outside the Futurism circle. His interest in abstractionism, for instance, came to the fore quite early on in his career. His first solo exhibition was held at the Milione Gallery in Milan, a venue founded in 1930 by Gino Ghiringhelli and directed by Edoardo Persico, who was at that time the editor of Casabella, a magazine which was to become a point of reference for architects and designers worldwide. In the gallery’s bulletin, Il Milione: Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, Persico serialised some fundamental texts of the abstract art movement in Europe, such as Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane (Punkt und Linie zu Fläche, 1926) or Paul Klee’s Notebooks (Tagebücher, 1920), and many of the artists gathering at the Galleria Milione, such as Lucio Fontana, Atanasio Soldati, Mauro Reggiani and Luigi Veronesi also became leading figures in Italian abstract art.9 The Milione’s library was also one of the first institutions in Italy to make available the famous Bauhausbücher (14 volumes published between 1925 and 1931), and where Munari could have familiarised himself with the experimental graphics of Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Bayer, director of the print workshop at the Bauhaus. It was in fact thanks to Persico that the works of Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright were discussed and analysed in Italy, and in Milan particularly. Consequently, the Milione Gallery became the meeting point for key representatives of Italian rationalist architecture like Giuseppe Terragni, Alberto Sartoris, Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini. Regarding the relationship with Futurism, it should not be forgotten that Munari was active during a ‘regressive’ phase of the movement, within the so-called ‘return to order’ (ritorno all’ordine) expressed by post-WWI Futurism, after the demise of the group during the war. In addition to distancing itself from the rhetoric and iconoclastic euphoria of the ‘heroic years’, it is evident that the movement lost the strong innovative charge of the early years, while Munari’s strong experimental vein and his capacity to re-invent himself remained constant throughout his career. Moreover, Munari was facing historical evidence that the language of the avant-garde was inherently destined to run out: avant-gardist radical proposals and gestures, intrinsically instantaneous and ephemeral, become trite and ineffectual when repeated too many times. The values of modernity and modernism extolled in the early 1910s by the first manifestos of Futurism, were already common knowledge in the 1920s. However, what remained of that legacy was its experimental thrust and a series of ideas that were left purely at the stage of the project and had not been fully expressed and fleshed out. To understand this cultural-historical passage, it may be useful to resort to a conceptual synthesis expressed by Umberto Eco in his Postscript to ‘The Name of the Rose’, in which he claimed: ‘there comes a moment in which the avant-garde (the modern) can not go any further, because it has finally produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The post-modern answer to the modern is to recognise that the past, since it can not be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: ironically, in a non-innocent manner’.10 Munari’s artistic experimentation and visual research in the early years seem to synthesise the transitional phase in the development of modern art that Eco fleshes out. On the one hand Munari overcomes the antagonistic ‘nihilism’ of the avant-garde in terms of parodic citationism (with a genuine postmodernist attitude ante litteram); on the other he singles out the most fruitful formal ideas proposed by the Futurists and develops them in very

9 Cf. E. Crispolti (ed.), Dal futurismo all’astrattismo. Un percorso d’avanguardia nell’arte italiana del primo Novecento (Rome: Edieuropa/ De Luca Editori, 2002). 10 U. Eco, Il nome della rosa. 2nd ed. (Milan: Bompiani, 1983), p. 529.

rRrR (Sound of an Aeroplane) c. 1927

The Machine’s Hospital 1929

personal directions, attuned to the type of artistic experimentation that informed the European scene at that time and that saw visual arts moving towards abstractionism. Far from expressing the nihilistic outcomes of conceptual art, as synthesised by Eco, Munari is able to bypass any dead-ends, any formal exhaustion of specific art forms, by constantly moving from art form to art form (which was in itself a Futurist method), and by deepening a full range of conceptual ideas with different languages and materials, constantly side-stepping and transferring intuitions in different expressive domains: from visual art to industrial design, from advertising to video art and film, from photography to performance art. In reference to the first point, elements of irony and playfulness – parodic revisitations of themes or stylistic elements used by Futurism and other avant-garde groups – are clearly visible in Munari’s earlier works, to the point that he prompted a rebuke by Brunas (Bruna Somenzi) who openly criticised Munari in 1932 in the journal Futurismo: ‘Futurism is too serious and does not allow one to joke about it or to use bitter useless passéist irony [...]. Be a good polite “student” and leave behind any criticism or the presumption to be a “master”’.11 As early as 1927, when Munari was only twenty years old, one can discern elements that were indicative of an ironic distance towards the aesthetic theories of Futurism. In his collage rRrR (Sound of an Aeroplane) one can clearly see the ironic and parodic allusion to the onomatopeic experimentation of Marinetti’s famous words-infreedom novel: Zang Tumb Tuuum (1914), beginning with the very name he adopted to sign the painting: ‘BUM’, which is both an abbreviation of Bruno Munari and the most common onomatopoeia in Italian usage associated with an explosion. The letters ‘R’ are written in ink, capitalised or in lowercase, italicised, as if part of a table in a first grade spelling-book. The aeroplane does not show any dynamism; the wheels are those of a bicycle and

11 C. Salaris, Storia del futurismo (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985), p. 201.

And thus we would set about seeking an aeroplane woman 1930s

Misunderstood Poet 1933

the perspective is overtly askew. The drawing does not reflect the oblique vision provoked by flight, so dear to aeropainters such as Tullio Crali or Fedele Azari, but mimics in parodic terms the drawings of elementary school children. The same ironic attitude towards aeropainting, a dominant trend in Futurist art at that time, which incidentally he somehow contributed to on the margins,12 is also visible in a series of later sketches and photomontages all made in 1936, such as The Poetic Joy of Flight,13 The Smell of the Aircraft, Back then the Aeroplane was made of Bamboo and Canvas and And thus we would set about seeking an aeroplane woman. The latter in particular is interesting also because it is testimony to Munari’s own exploration of another key issue discussed by Marinetti and his acolytes in the 1910s, specifically in manifestos such as Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine (1910), that is, the imaginative coupling of man and machines (‘identificazione dell’uomo con il motore’), which was translated by Munari in terms of pseudo-mythological, centaur-like, but also post-human, cyborg-like, imagery, and which is visible in collages like Misunderstood Poet (1933) or They have even invented this, the world has gone mad14 (1930s). A similar tongue-in-cheek tone towards the Futurist’s rhetoric of machines is visible in the painting titled The Machine’s Hospital, which seems a response to Fedele Azari’s manifesto of 1927 For a Society for the Protection of Machines, in which Azari stated that machines are living beings with their own peculiar and specific intelligence and sensibility. The same theriomorphic imagination is further discussed in Munari’s Manifesto of Machinism (a Futurist gesture par excellence), published in 1952, which is, again, an ironic and playful revisitation of one of the favourite topoi of Marinetti’s movement.

12 See Schnapp. 13 See p. 119 in the present catalogue. 14 See p. 110 in the present catalogue.

However, as already stated, Munari clearly realised that it was possible to develop some of the most salient aspects and ideas that were left unfinished in the first wave of Futurism. Leaving aside their polemical rhetoric, the Futurists’ exuberant early experimentalism was fertile ground for a formal exploration that was conceptually driven. For Munari it was necessary to bypass the formal regression and the mystical drifts of the ‘Second Futurism’ of the 1920s and ‘30s, to recuperate their original inventive force.

Meo Cat 1949

Zizì the Monkey 1952

In various interviews, Munari repeatedly cited Enrico Prampolini, one of the most prominent names in the Futurist circle, as an inspirational figure, and an artist who was far more up-to-date with and aware of the wider international artistic scene than Marinetti. It was thanks to Prampolini that Munari embarked on some of his most innovative experimental activities, related to the so-called ‘polymaterial art’, which was a novelty in the European contexts of the early twentieth century, and which Prampolini had extensively practiced and theorised since 1915. This is clearly visible in ABC Dadà, in which Munari employs all sort of objects to compose his Dadaist spelling tables, and which seem to anticipate Italo Calvino’s Piccolo sillabario illustrato.15 Another important Futurist source of inspiration for Munari was the manifesto Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (1915), signed by Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero, which can be considered one of the first theoretical texts of abstract art produced in Italy. In it we can see Munari’s aesthetic in a nutshell, for instance in the suggested use of lowly materials such as

strands of wire, cotton, wool, silk of every thickness and coloured glass, tissue paper, celluloid, metal netting, every sort of transparent and highly coloured material. Fabrics, mirrors, sheets of metal, coloured tin-foil, every sort of gaudy material. Mechanical and electrical devices; musical and noise-making elements, chemically luminous liquids of variable colours; springs, levers, tubes, etc.16

Another element of continuity between Balla and Depero’s manifesto and Munari’s experimentation is their interest in toys, crafted in order to broaden children’s sensitivity, imagination and physical dynamism – ideas that, as stated, Munari developed and expanded in his widely praised ‘pedagogical artistic laboratories’ for children. Moreover, he engaged in designing a series of toys like the Scatola di Architettura MC N. 1 (1945), an architecture box containing a series of wooden bricks of various shapes to make any number of different buildings; and Meo Cat (1949) and Zizì the Monkey (1952), toys made of foam rubber designed for Pirelli. The same could be said about Balla and Depero’s proposal for a ‘rotoplastic noise fountain’, as Munari went on to build several fountains in the 1950s, such as the one that was placed in front of the book pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1954, the large rotating fountain, with brightly coloured vertical blades, for the Fiera di Milano of 1955,17 or the 5 Drop Fountain made in Tokyo in 1965.

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there are a number of works that bear witness to Munari’s gradual transition from Futurism, as a preparatory phase in his career, to abstractionism which characterised his production starting from the 1930s. As he claimed years later: ‘I became conscious of the fact that working in accordance with Futurist methods meant using static techniques to show dynamic things. Thus, back then, I came to realise that what the Futurists were doing was to freeze a specific moment of dynamism’.19

A particular focal point of interest for both Munari and the Futurists was also the representation of ‘dynamism’ in art. Faithful to the idea of ‘studying “how one thing becomes another”, that is the natural evolution of things’,18

Actually, in this regard, it is interesting to consider the preparatory phase of Munari’s transition to abstractionism, which is testimony of his own ‘freezing’ of dynamism. In the sketch Walking Man20 (1931), for instance, it is evident that Munari was trying to study Boccioni’s famous sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), by reducing the intrinsic dynamism of a marching man, explored by Boccioni in his sculpture, to its basic geometric and volumetric structure. Rather than in movement itself, at this stage Munari seems more interested in what remains permanent in the dynamic flux of a moving figure, in the intrinsic constitutional geometry of a whirling image. As a matter of fact, when studying and representing the human figure, Munari always aimed at geometrical essentialism if not minimalism, as one can see for instance in the 1927 Portrait of the Futurist Luigi Russolo or in the illustrations for Marinetti’s theatrical piece The Naked Prompter (1929-1930), reproduced in the journal Comoedia.21 The same could be said about At the Double22 (1932) a drawing in which the reference to Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912) or Girl Running on a Balcony (1913) is easily detectable. The dynamism of the running man is here recomposed into a precise geometrical structure. In Man in Movement (1931), the geometric stylisation of the human body is eventually completed, in such a manner that any residual

15 I. Calvino, Romanzi e racconti, vol. III, ed. by M. Barenghi and B. Falcetto (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), pp. 334-341. 16 G. Balla and F. Depero, Ricostruzione Futurista dell’universo [1915], Milan: Direzione del Movimento Futurista. In U. Apollonio, Futurist Manifestos (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), pp. 197-200. 17 B. Munari, Codice ovvio, ed. by P. Fossati (Turin: Einaudi, 1971), pp. 58-63. 18 B. Munari, ‘Introduzione di Bruno Munari’, in Futurismo linea sino a Peruzzi, ed. by F. Miglietta (Cosenza: Il Calabrese, 1975).

19 M. Hájek, ‘Nello spazio. Intervista a Bruno Munari’ in Finessi, pp. 136-139 (136). 20 See p. 36 in the present catalogue. 21 F. T. Marinetti, ‘Il suggeritore nudo. Simultaneità Futurista in undici sintesi’ in Comoedia. Rassegna mensile del teatro 11-12 (19291930), pp. 38-44. Reproduced in this catalogue. 22 See p. 38 in the present catalogue.

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Portrait of the Futurist Luigi Russolo 1927

Man in Movement 1931

element of dynamism is converted into representational essentialism. Man in Movement moves clearly towards the abstract, not as a break but as a formal deepening, combining the Futurist aesthetic and that of the international masters of abstractionism, such as Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, or Robert Delaunay. However, the works that seem to make all these ideas and cues converge – not only as a formal synthesis, but as a genuine experimental breakthrough – are the Useless Machines, one of the first examples of mobiles in the history of European art. Although they seem to take inspiration, in their technical affinities, from Balla and Depero’s ‘dynamic three-dimensional constructions’ as theorised in Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, Munari’s Useless Machines should be read as surreptitious ironic interpretations of Futurism tecnolatria, more Dadaist in spirit. Rather than opting for any grandiose or powerful machinery, in the spirit of Marinetti’s early manifestos, Munari’s Useless Machines were built with very light materials like paper, thin wooden sticks and silk threads,23 practicing a form of aesthetic minimalism or rather essentialism that was far from the Futuristic hyperbolic thematisation of machines and technology. On the other hand, however, the Useless Machines wanted to challenge the nihilistic drift of abstract art, by reinventing it with the introduction of a genuine dynamic element into the composition, producing in turn the first Italian example of kinetic art.

Umberto Boccioni Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913

Giacomo Balla Girl Running on a Balcony 1913

With his Useless Machines, Munari was in fact interested in exploring the time-space continuum, and how to make a work of art that could interact with the environment and change accordingly: to make a work of art that it is truly, and constitutionally dynamic, outdoing on this score both the Futurists and the abstractionists. Following his proverbial dictum that ‘one thing leads to another’25 (Da cosa nasce cosa), going beyond Futurism for Munari was not a matter of radically breaking with the past, but developing and deepening what the past has left us, in order to produce something that speaks to the present and to the future.

As Munari wrote in Design as Art: ‘Personally, I thought that instead of painting squares, triangles and other geometric forms which still had a realistic feel (take Kandinsky, for instance), it might be interesting to free abstract forms from the stasis of paintings and suspend them in the air, joining them together so that they might inhabit our environment with us, sensitive to the actual feel of reality’.24

23 C. Lichtenstein, A. W. Häberli, Far vedere L’aria: A Visual Reader on Bruno Munari (Berlin: Springer. 2000), p. 38. 24 Munari 1966, p. 10.

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25 B. Munari, Da cosa nasce cosa (Bari: Laterza, 1981).

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Graphics

53. Study for a childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book, 1935

52. rRrR (Sound of an Aeroplane), c. 1927

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107

54. The Hypercritic, 1930s

108

55. The Elderly Pilot on Leave, 1930s

109

56. …They have even invented this, the world has gone mad..., 1930s

110

57. L’Ala d’Italia, 1934

111

58. The Age of Balloons, 1930s

112

59. Untitled, c. 1930

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60. At the Heart of Flight, c. 1930

61. Forces of the Empire, 1936

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115

62. Aeroplanes and Archers, 1932

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63. Aeroplanes in Formation, 1930s

117

64. Here I Am Briefly, 1936

118

65. The Poetic Joy of Flight, 1930s

119

66. Motors and ‘Victory of the Air’, 1934

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67. Bombardament of New York, 1942

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69. Brief Guide (graphic design for a tourist guide for Studio Boggeri), c. 1935

68. Shell, 1934

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123

70. Study for Snia Viscosa, 1935

124

71. Study for Snia Viscosa, 1935

125

72. T (study for an advertisement in the journal Campo Grafico), 1935

126

73. Gears, 1935

127

74. Rectangles, 1930

128

75. Berlin Olympics, 1936

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76. Composition for the journal L’Ala d’Italia, c. 1936

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77. Composition for the journal L’Ala d’Italia, c. 1936

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79. Butterfly (Birograph), 1948

78. Biro ‘The Ballpoint Pen’, 1950

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133

80. Textile design, 1950s

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81. Textile design, 1950s

135

82. Textile design, 1950s

136

83. Textile design, 1950s

137

84. Textile design, 1950s

138

85. Textile design, 1950s

139

86. Textile design, 1950s

140

87. Textile design, 1950s

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89. Cow, c. 1950

88. Moto Guzzi Bilancio, 1955

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90. Meo Cat, Pirelli, 1949

91. ZizĂŹ the Monkey, Pirelli, 1952

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145

93. Agip, c. 1950

92. Industry, c. 1950

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The Maximum with the Minimum Luca Zaffarano

Complexity and Creativity Bruno Munari is one of the most interesting Italian artists of the twentieth century, for at least two principal reasons: the complexity of his poetic thought – explored through tireless experimentation – and the high standard of his work, which remained constant until his death. The richness of his thought was expressed not only in fine art, but also in many related spheres such as illustration, graphics, advertising, industrial design and education. Its very complexity has led to his work being penalised from the perspective of historical analysis, the process of understanding the artist according to a deconstructive and classificatory method having resulted in drastic over-simplifications. The figure of Bruno Munari is too layered and kaleidoscopic to be described in a brief overview; scholars have frequently researched his work by applying arbitrary segmentations, resulting in Munari having been presented from time to time – and in a mutually exclusive manner – as a designer, educator, inventor, writer or graphic designer, among other things: all reductive definitions that do not enable comprehensive analysis of his work’s organic diversity. Munari’s mode of expressing himself in an apparently discontinuous and mutable manner, paying little attention to pre-established hierarchies in terms of the techniques and media employed,1 constitutes its indisputable relevance – especially today, when the notion of a free, cross-fertilisation between different disciplines, genres and media has been definitively accepted. His creative process deliberately incorporated different materials, ideas and inventions through an approach that was never sequential, and therefore difficult to describe in a linear manner, being instead characterised by a parallel vision that manifested itself through the reworking of an idea in a multiplicity of forms. Munari always maintained a staunch didactic and theoretical opposition to an

Useless Machine, c. 1957 Plexiglass, nylon and brass 350 cm h., 50 cm approx. diam. Private Collection

1 In the volume by T. Sauvage, Pittura italiana del dopoguerra (1945-1957) (Milan: Schwarz, 1957) Munari describes his disregard for a priori definitions in these words: ‘The artist’s task is to communicate to other individuals a poetic message, expressed through shapes and colours, in two or more dimensions, with movement; without a priori concerns over whether the result will be painting or sculpture or something else (such as useless machines or projections) provided it contain this message and that this message speaks, that it is understood by at least a minimum of people.’

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Aerial Machine, 1930, 10 copies reproduced by Danese, Milan, in 1971.

adherence to any recognisable formal vocabulary, to the extent that the ‘Munari-style’ has been defined by an Italian semiologist as essentially a ‘non-style’.2 As an artist, Munari maintained the role of a pioneering researcher with unusual consistency and appreciable coherence throughout the course of the twentieth century. From Futurism to the Concrete Art Movement, from his ‘aerial’ installations of the 1930s to the abstract works of the 1940s, from his dematerialised paintings created by means of light projections dating from the 1950s to the performance pieces of the 1960s, and from his graphic design projects to his theoretical texts, Munari sustained, intact and uncontaminated, an extraordinary level of creativity from the 1920s to the 1990s. In this respect, his work contrasts with that of many other figures, whose career paths can be plotted along a Gaussian Curve, where a peak of artistic maturity is followed by a long phase of decline and repetition – often in deference to the requirements of the market.

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An example of Cosmic Painting, from La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, no. 11, November 1935, Alfieri & Lacroix, Milan, 1935.

The Machine Room In 1926 Munari arrived in Milan at the age of nineteen, having decided to become a painter and desiring to escape his parent’s hotel business, based in the Polesine area south-west of Venice. He immediately came into contact with Futurist circles, and at the end of 1927 participated in his first group show entitled ‘Exhibition of Thirty-four Futurist Painters’ organised by the Galleria Pesaro, towards which the Milanese Futurist group gravitated.3 Munari was noticed almost immediately by Marinetti who, on the occasion of an exhibition of 1929 entitled ‘Thirtythree Futurists – Painting, Sculpture, Decorative Art’ (again held at the Galleria Pesaro), observed in his catalogue essay how ‘The Milanese group of Futurist painters led by the very young and very ingenious Bruno Munari reveals itself to be in full working order’.4

This anomalous and exceptional level of creativity was the result of a constant method based on pure research, free from preconceived aesthetic ends and primarily directed towards exploring the characteristics of the media employed and their technological characteristics: a method centered on the belief that only through the knowledge and mastery of materials and technologies (combined with serendipity) may a creative form of visual communication emerge. A method by which wisdom, rigour and design are married with fantasy and poetry through a process of experimentation, producing visual art whose apparent inutility reminds us of just how valuable the useless process of creating and inventing really is.

In 1930 Munari was only twenty-two years old, yet through direct contact or with the mediation of Prampolini, he was very well-informed about new artistic developments and the research of the major European movements and figures (Kandinsky, Man Ray, Duchamp, De Stijl, etc.).5 With a certain degree of autonomy and a precocious maturity, Munari soon realised that he was not entirely in tune with the theoretical positions of the Futurist movement – the inherent and logical limitations of which he grasped when attempting to create dynamic-spatial compositions while remaining within the restricting confines of the two-dimensional painting.

2 O. Calabrese, ‘Munari style: senza style’, in La Repubblica, 1 June 1990. In an interview given to M. Giuffrè and published in Manifesto, 22 December 1995, Munari stated: ‘There are different ways of making art. One, for example, which is the most common, is to give it a style. So it happens that a certain artist will create a certain kind of art for his entire life. All this does not enrich knowledge, but only serves to confirm that there is that form of art and nothing else. So I think I’m among those who instead follow their own natures, where reality leads them at a precise moment. I try to find out if there is something to learn from nature and to create something in

three dimensions that will visually communicate what I have discovered.’ 3 E. Crispolti, ed., Nuovi Archivi del Futurismo. Cataloghi di esposizioni (Rome: De Luca, 2010), pp. 279-82. 4 Ibid., pp. 328-31. 5 A. C. Quintavalle, ‘Intervista a Bruno Munari’, in Bruno Munari (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979), pp. 15-22.

The European context in which Munari’s work evolved was punctuated by a number of renowned events, which for the sake of completeness we shall briefly summarise here. In 1920 the Russian artist Rodchenko presented a suspended structure entitled Oval Hanging Construction No. 12, and the following year displayed three

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Drawing of Machine’s Breath (Useless Machine) 1932. Jacqueline Vodoz - Bruno Danese Foundation, Milan.

monochromatic works in the primary colours red, blue and yellow at the ‘5 x 5 = 25’ exhibition, each called Last Painting.

If – for these protagonists – the negation of the idea of painting by recourse to the monochromatic surface contained a blend of libertarian mysticism (Malevich) and revolutionary socialism (Rodchenko), the rejection of painting in the famous manifesto of 1915 written by the Italian Futurists Balla and Depero entitled ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ was principally motivated by a desire to transcend painting in order to give shape to the invisible. However, this text addressed theoretical intentions rather than practical results. In 1919 Man Ray created his Lampshade; some years later, one of Moholy-Nagy’s students at the Bauhaus, Irmgard Sörensen, constructed a suspended object.7 In the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ of January 1938, Duchamp hung sacks of coal from the ceiling, whilst in the centre of the room stood an old Parisian taxi fitted with a hydraulic system that made rain fall both on the driver – who had the head of a shark – and a blonde passenger whose clothes were covered with lettuce. This installation took the viewer into a world rich in the unexpected, the playful and the absurd – a world no longer having anything to do with the picture or with painting.

accidentally destroyed, but reconstructed in 1971 for the Milanese Danese company in an edition limited to 10 examples – was an object composed of white wooden sticks connecting seven red balls and one black sphere, as well as a number of curved metal inserts. ‘Hanging from the ceiling of a room by a cord, it moved slowly, driven by air currents. It was like a constellation, a group of atoms, or – as one might say today – a space station’.8 Close analysis of the Aerial Machine recalls similarities with the cosmic imagery characteristic of Futurist painting during these years, particularly that of Prampolini and Munari himself, who throughout this period was greatly interested in scientific literature, astronomy and the works of Leonardo.9 Around the same time10 he realised his Useless Machines – effectively ‘mobiles’, where each element of the structure was free to move with random rotations around the vertical axis of the cord on which it was suspended, unlike the rigid Aerial Machine. These components likewise exploited the force of air currents – even the very weakest – to generate movements in the same or contrary directions, and of different speeds, bringing an element of change and surprise to these compositions of coloured forms, painted on both sides and floating in space. As stated, compared to the Aerial Machine these later works possessed an additional degree of freedom, since it was not the entire structure that moved in space but each individual element, independently of the others. The Useless Machines were therefore the result of an aesthetic idea similar to that which formed in the mind of Calder following his revelatory encounter with the minimal paintings of Mondrian: namely, the desire to project abstract paintings into space and endow them with a temporal dimension. For this reason Munari’s Useless Machines have been identified as some of the first examples of kinetic art by Frank Popper,11 alongside works by Man Ray, Rodchenko and Calder.

In 1930, engaging with contemporary theoretical reflections concerning the decline of easel painting, Munari produced his first work able to move freely in space, christening it his Aerial Machine. This piece – which was

Munari first exhibited examples of his Useless Machines in Futurist exhibitions such as the 1934 show ‘A Selection of Twenty-five Year-old Futurists’ at the Galleria 3 Arti in Milan. At the opening, Depero delivered a discourse in

6 B. Chatwin, ‘George Costakis: the Story of an Art Collector in the Soviet Union’, in What am I doing Here (London: Picador, 1990). 7 H. M. Wingler, Il Bauhaus (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1987), p. 399. 8 B. Munari, Codice Ovvio (Turin: Einaudi, 1971), p. 6. 9 A. Benedettini, ‘Munari, 90 anni di fantasia’, in La Repubblica, 23 October 1997; C. Lichtenstein, A. W. Häberli, ‘Bruno Munari. Air Made Visible’ (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2000), p. 274. 10 On the dating of the Useless Machines the author relates the oral evidence given by Munari to the art historian Miroslava Hájek concerning a mobile created in 1930, and therefore contemporary with the Aerial Machine, hung by Munari in the end room of the studio he shared for a number of years with Ricas (Riccardo Castagnedi), and which he simply called ‘the machine’, which was composed of free-moving elements. A preparatory drawing for the Useless Machines dated 1932 can be found in the collection of works that Munari

donated to the Centro Studi e Archivi della Comunicazione (CSAC), University of Parma (B006568S-C1 / 3). A study for the lost work Machine’s Breath – an amusing machine-metronome, also dated 1932 –can be found in the Jacqueline Vodoz - Bruno Danese Foundation (Milan). In his essay ‘La Santabarbara futurista di Milano’, published in the journal Futurismo, 18 June 1933, Tullio d’Albisola describes a visit to Munari’s studio and speaks of the ‘large, but silent, model of the “Useless Machine”’. In December of that year Munari wrote to Tullio d’Albisola: ‘I am now creating some important paintings and aeroplastics (that is, sensitive machines) but tommaso [Marinetti, ed.] doesn’t understand anything about these things and exalts the drawings of camillo camillini from reggio before remembering those who are undertaking serious research to elevate the name of Italian futurism, damn it [...]’, in Quaderni Tullio d’Albisola no. 2 (19281939), ed. by D. Presotto (Savona: Liguria, 1981). 11 F. Popper, L’arte cinetica (Turin: Einaudi, 1970), p. 334.

Prior to Rodchenko, in 1915 Kasimir Malevich painted a black square on a white background: a work that not only signified the negation of painting, but also ‘the painterly equivalent of the Ka’ba covered by a black curtain’6 as Bruce Chatwin states, reminding us that the Russian Constructivist movement contained a strong Muslim element.

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The Big Wheel, water-wheel on the Adige river.

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Drawings of Useless Machines 1935-1945

which he spoke about the aesthetics of the Useless Machines.12 Munari presented eight works on this occasion, including Machine’s Breath (Useless Machine) and the ‘aeroplastic’ Volumes of Air; he also signed the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Aeroplastics in which he proposed a new art: ‘machine = art, that is, invention of useless machines’.13 They were also displayed later that year in the ‘Rooms of the Twenty-five Year-old Futurists of the Milanese Headquarters’ at the Teatro Municipale in Reggio Emilia,14 as well as at the exhibition ‘The Futurist Aeropainters’, inaugurated by Marinetti at the Galleria del Milione in 1938, where Useless Machines 21 and 23 were displayed.15 Munari devoted an essay to these works entitled ‘What Useless Machines are and Why’, which appeared in the journal La Lettura in July 1937, and which is reproduced in the Appendix to the present catalogue. Many of the first examples of these works are now lost. Munari immediately ran into difficulties with art dealers who manifested a constant diffidence towards works that could in no way be described as examples of traditional painting or sculpture, being objects intended to be hung from the ceiling like a chandelier. Consequently, the first Useless Machines were given away to artist or architect friends who, probably because of their lightness, simplicity and humble materials – sticks of balsa wood, cardboard, blown glass, etc. – considered them to be something like a child’s toy, and certainly not comparable with the monumental paintings of artists such as Sironi or Carrà.16 After many decades Munari recreated some of the earliest examples in limited editions, indicating both the date of the object’s creation and that of its reconstruction. Unlike Calder’s works, Munari’s Useless Machines were closely related to their environments; the ‘mechanical’ elements, illuminated by spotlights, interacted with the shadows they projected onto the walls, generating abstract films from nothing. Useless Machines were made from real images, obtained by the object’s moving parts and geometric images reverberating in a continuous dialogue that incorporated an element of the unexpected.

12 Manuscript of Fortunato Depero, ‘Discorso di Depero alla Galleria delle 3 Arti – Foro Bonaparte – Milano marzo 1934’, Fondo Fortunato Depero (Dep.4.1.72), Archivio del ‘900, Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto; ‘La quindicina futurista inaugurata da Depero’, in Il Corriere della Sera, 5 March 1934. 13 The list of works appears in the brochure accompanying the exhibition, reprinted in Nuovi Archivi del Futurismo, op. cit., pp. 575-77. 14 The exhibition was announced in the article ‘Mostra futurista’, published in La Città Nuova, sintesi del futurismo mondiale e di tutte le avanguardie: quindicinale di arte e vita, directed by Fillia, vol. III, nos. 7-8, 30 April 1934, p. 7. 15 Nuovi Archivi sul Futurismo, op. cit., p. 686-87.

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Study for a Useless Machine.

Accordingly, for Munari the Useless Machine transformed itself into an environment that enveloped the viewer in both direct and indirect forms, mobilising the sensitivity of the public as well as challenging its aesthetic certainties. In an Italian context, one must of course make reference here to the theoretical propositions expressed by Boccioni in his 1912 Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, where he stated ‘there can be no renewal except through a sculpture of the environment, because only by this means can plastic art develop and come to model the atmosphere which surrounds objects’. Another crucial text is the aforementioned manifesto ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ by Balla and Depero, which represents the real ‘big-bang’ for the poetics and aesthetics of Munari, especially in terms of the authors’ stated ambition to ‘create plastic complexes which we will set in motion’ giving ‘skeleton and flesh to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable and the imperceptible’ elements of the universe. Munari’s Useless Machines – the forerunners of kinetic art – perhaps also constitute the most complete realisation of such theoretical principles. Whilst possessing a dominant programmatic character, the Useless Machines are perhaps closer to certain natural phenomena than has hitherto been recognised. Munari recalled in an interview the games he played as a child in which nature was seen as an incomparable designer, the artist discerning in natural processes a coherence between form, function and use. Munari explained how the idea of the Useless Machines came in part from the observation of such natural phenomena as the play of water generated by old mills on the Adige river with their large paddle wheels,17 as well as the effects of air currents, thereby also relating the Useless Machines to childhood games created with scraps of paper that were taken up again some years later in the famous performance ‘Making the Air Visible’ at Campo Urbano (Como, 1969).18

16 B. Munari, Design as Art (London: Penguin, 2008), p. 15-23. First Italian edition Bari: Laterza, 1966. 17 Munari spent his childhood in Badia Polesine, a region to the right of the Adige River. 18 Como, 21 September 1969, L. Caramel, U. Mulas and B. Munari, Interventi estetici nella dimensione collettiva urbana, catalogue with photographs by Ugo Mulas and graphic work by Bruno Munari (Como: Nani, 1969). Munari’s memorable performance ‘visualised’ the air of the Piazza Duomo by inviting the public to fold and cut pieces of paper and throw them from the tower.

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Study of the movements of a Useless Machine, published in issue no. 5 of the M.A.C. (Movimento Arte Concreta) Bulletin, 1952.

Harmonic design for a Useless Machine, 1956-68. The aluminium foil anodised with serigraphy colours has been cut to obtain the six elements constituting the machine (2 elements 10 squares long, 1 element 8 squares long, 1 element 6 squares long, 1 element 4 squares long and 1 element 2 squares long).

Munari explains: ‘At Badia Polesine where I was born there is a river, which is very beautiful, and there are these old mills that are made of wood with thatched roofs and large paddle wheels that are driven by the water, moving and pulling up the weeds of the river; it’s all a game of colours and lights, very beautiful’.19 He goes on: ‘[...] in my father’s house there was a huge attic with [...] very low windows reaching to the floor from which I threw strips of paper in different shapes, such as a small rectangle measuring one by fifteen centimetres; as it fell this rectangle span around and looked like a wrapped sweet. I also cut a small triangle of paper measuring about five centimetres by ten [...] and let it fall from the window; it wavered a little, like a dead leaf, since the centre of gravity was out of kilter with the form…’.20 When asked how he had conceived of the Useless Machines Munari replied: ‘I think the idea was born from an observation of abstract painting. And also in connection with those pieces of paper that I released into the air as a child’.21 The Useless Machine was therefore not a senseless, repetitive, mechanical object, but rather an unpredictable and random one; almost a creation with its own life, and even a little ‘imaginative’ in nature. The concept of unpredictability often recurs in the work of Munari and was used by the artist not only for its function as an ‘engine’ – as a motor for the generation of the machine’s movements – but also to form an analogy with and imitation of that which Munari observed within the natural world, where the randomness determined by many different environmental conditions alters those rules which, described by means of formal generative grammars, are the basis of the morphogenesis of all natural processes.

19 A. Barberis, ‘Intervista a Bruno Munari’, in Le voci che contano (Milan: Il Formichiere, 1978). 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.

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Accordingly, the need was felt to create an artistic environment in which the audience was able immerse itself, and where the work in movement interacted with its reverberations, shadows, moiré patterns, random movements and sounds – as in the case of the Useless Machines, but also the Concave-convex of 1946, or those images dematerialised by means of projected light, or deconstructed with Polaroid filters (1950-53), or even by the 5-Drop Fountain made in Tokyo in 1965. The description of the machine as ‘useless’, which contradicted Marinetti’s perception of it, is a wry oxymoron that forces us to think about the usefulness of the useless (art) and the uselessness of the useful (the machine), making us reflect on this concept even in the context of our daily lives. The title has the strength and simplicity of a slogan: it reminds us that the useful machine has an in-built obsolescence, in contrast to the beneficial utility of the Useless Machine’s pure poetry which, through its unstable and changing forms resembling music, is intended simply to delight and to keep us entertained. Is Munari an Open-source Paradigm? Without entering into the argument concerning what is and what is not art, a subject to which Munari himself devoted much thought in texts such as Artist and Designer,22 it is nevertheless important to note that generally speaking an artistic aesthetic primarily aims at promoting a new type of beauty or aesthetic harmony, whilst a design is subject to the constraints imposed by the client in terms of material, use, affordability and so forth: all limits that suddenly disappear when the production is for useless – that is to say, aesthetic – ends.

22 B. Munari, Artista e designer (Bari: Laterza, 1971).

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Study for Concave-convex 1949. Jacqueline Vodoz - Bruno Danese Foundation, Milan.

On closer inspection this duality cannot be applied mechanically or without some adjustment to the work of Munari, in which there is always an element of overlapping. All of his aesthetic explorations, from the Useless Machines to the Concave-convex, Projections of light, Polarised projections and Negative-positives were explained in detail by the artist himself in many books,23 not so much because the work required a further written clarification in order to be completely understood, but to reveal the creative processes underlying the constructive method. In general, the morphogenetic process is as important as the aesthetic result in the work of Munari, describing a rigorously experimental method to which the variations brought about by the use of imagination and aesthetic knowledge gained or consolidated in the moment of creation, or previously, apply. Everyone sees what he knows24 is a synthetic aphorism used by Munari to explain the falsity of the popular assertion according to which beauty is subjective. Inverting the logic of this statement, it is reasonable to say that that which is subjectively appreciated is an objective indicator of the degree of visual culture established – and cultivated – within the individual viewer. Munari believed that seeing is a cognitive process which must be nourished, expanded by curiosity and open to the acceptance of new and even disruptive or unexpected forms of beauty. In his books Munari explains how to design a Useless Machine in accordance with a constructive method that employs shapes, colours and movements which are proportional, harmonious and rhythmic. He explains how to fold wire mesh in a particular manner in order to obtain a Concave-convex, the form of which clearly adheres to the topography of certain mathematical structures, and tells us how to light the object in such a way as to obtain overlapping effects of shadows. He provides details of how to create monumental works able to be projected onto the walls by inserting different materials into a slide and projecting light through it. Such a deliberately didactic method is not aimed at explaining the beauty of works that are able to communicate without the need for

23 For a complete bibliography, see G. Maffei, Munari’s Books (Mantua: Corraini, 2009). 24 ‘Everyone sees what he knows’ is a paragraph that summarises the fifty lectures Munari delivered concerning visual communication at Harvard University in 1967 (Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, Ma.) collected in the book: B. Munari, Design e comunicazione visiva (Bari: Laterza, 1968).

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Study for Concave-convex. In the drawings, the different developmental phases of the object are visible; the fixing points are established on the surface of the square with harmonious proportions.

additional explanations, but corresponds to a pedagogical intention of describing the creative process, of revealing the experimental act and of violating a code established by the imagination. In this sense Munari’s compositional code is strongly open-source, modifiable, improvable. Munari tells us how he starts his works, how he achieves his results and shows us the way to making them better as well as in a different manner, with an approach towards art that is not elitist or exclusive. For him the work of art was not to be understood as an exclusive luxury item made for the few, but a product that would foster the cultural development of an altogether wider, open-minded public. ‘We comprehend the full importance of a work of art only when, in our mental processes, we go through the same problems that the artist went through in producing his work’.25 In many cases Munari developed a Socratic and engaging approach, of the kind long used in educational workshops for children and adults, and that would originally take place under his careful supervision. This is described in the testimony included in the present catalogue by Munari’s son Alberto, in which he explains how as a thirteen year-old he assisted with the development of one of Munari’s greatest innovations through an experimental and playful approach: the dematerialisation of painting. The sharing of knowledge was one of the key points stressed in his immense activity as a writer, critic and thinker over the course of more than 80 books. The sharing of a technique, of the compositional properties of a material or a graphic invention, always entered into the semantics of his works of art. Of course, the true function of art is precisely that of communication and exposition, and Munari often created works in which he clearly illustrated the creative process, the way in which he arrived at a particular aesthetic result, which mental processes he developed, where imagination or chance intervened to influence the project

25 J. Dewey, L’arte come esperienza (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1951). Munari contributed a review of this text to issue 8 of the Bollettino del M.A.C. (Movimento Arte Concreta), 15 October 1952, in which he highlighted the importance of the chapter dedicated to criticism.

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X-Hour 1963

X-Hour 1945

and what process of construction was used. All of Munari’s works therefore involve an easily-repeatable process, because his poetic, cognitive and executive processes were all well explained. Perhaps it is also because of this intrinsic didactic aspect that Munari has long been copied – to the extent that many of his linguistic inventions have become the common heritage of contemporary visual language.

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the artist’s intervention. Leave the studio and look around: how many colours are out of tune, how many shop windows could be more beautiful, how many signs are of bad taste, how many clumsy plastic forms there are. Why not intervene?’.28 At this point it is important not to misunderstand Munari when he ‘narrates’ his own works, not to add poetic intent to his projects or descriptions of processes, and not to confuse works of art – or the serial production of aesthetic objects – with works of industrial or graphic design.

Some may see this attitude as a sort of utopian approach, and perhaps a little too ideological, but for Munari, who from the very beginning engaged with the notion of mass-produced works possessing an aesthetic function26 – as with his Flexy (1968), produced in a cheap, unlimited edition for the Italian company Danese – the intention was to address a new, attentive, intelligent and open-minded audience, one capable of reading in the creative processes described a paradigm to be applied in other and different creative contexts. To share knowledge rather than to preserve a separation between artist and audience, to democratise the art world, to make the creative act transparent, to take the creative artist off his or her pedestal, to define the artist’s new social role,27 are all goals that can be traced back to the fertile and iconoclastic thinking of the Futurist movement, sensitive to changes in society. These were to find their most complete theoretical expression during the post-war years of Italian economic development in the formulation of a ‘synthesis of the arts’: a multidisciplinary convergence between industry and art, artists and designers, and graphic designers and architects, all engaged in solving problems relating to aesthetics, visual communication, lifestyle and functionality. ‘Well, I would like to propose that the artist to return to the craft of art, which today is naturally not what it once was. Today, the public looks for beauty in a poster, a book cover, the decoration of a shop-front, the colours for its homes, or the shape of an iron or a sewing machine. [...] Think how much there is to do, how many objects, how many things await

Instead, Munari always tried to obtain the maximum with the minimum. Whether this took the form of intensely poetic environments created by using ordinary wire mesh (in the case of the Concave-convex ‘cloud’ of 1946), micro-compositions made with discarded materials such as scraps of colored plastic, cotton thread, onion skin, tissue and the like, sandwiched together in the frame of a slide (Projected paintings, 1950), moiré patterns obtained by the means of the refraction of evanescent waves caused by the fall of five drops of water (as in his fountain of 1965), or by using photocopied images, rocks collected on the beach, sculptures made with folded

26 In 1945, using the mechanism of a clock, Munari designed the kinetic ‘multiple’ X Hour that was reproduced in 1963 by the Danese company of Milan. Munari participated in the exhibition ‘Multiplication of Transformable Art’ at the Parisian Edouard Loeb Gallery in November 1959 alongside Rot, Mari Mack, Agam, Tinguely, Albers, Man Ray, Duchamp, Bury, Soto and Vasarely. In December of that year Daniel Spoerri presented the multiples of the Edizioni MAT (Multiplication d’Art Transformable) with works by Duchamp, Munari, Tinguely, Vasarely and others. In 1960 Munari organised the first group exhibition in Italy on the subject of the multiple entitled ‘Mat

Edition - Works of Animated and Multiplied Art’ at the Galleria Danese. In January 1967 he presented his solo exhibition ‘Serial Works 1958 to Today’ at the Galleria Vismara, Milan, and in 1968 he published ‘What are Multiples’ in response to a request by Armando Nizzi of Brescia’s Galleria Sincron, which was later republished in B. Munari, Codice Ovvio, op. cit., pp. 89-90. 27 B. Munari, Design as Art, op. cit., p. 25. 28 B. Munari, ‘L’arte è un mestiere fatto a regola d’arte’, in AZ arte d’oggi, vol. II, no. 1, January 1950, p. 1.

Low-cost Munari Munari is an artist that we can without doubt define today with the term ‘low-cost’. Throughout his career he created works of art from the cheapest materials. From the Useless Machines of the 1930s, made from wooden sticks, cardboard, fishing twine, blown glass and other unusual materials such as the hull of a pumpkin, Munari always favoured ‘poor’ materials, since his art was never predicated on the basis of impressing the viewer by means of an excessive ornamentation, the luxuriousness of the materials employed or high production costs that would be able to justify an equally high sales price.

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paper, and so on, Munari’s works always involved very low – almost non-existent – production costs. No longer large, expensive paintings offering few linguistic innovations but only the prestige of an easily recognisable status for the owner who showed them off in his living room like trophies, but rather works that are light, easily to disassemble, transportable (Munari was always preoccupied with ease of transportation), foldable and reproducible. An example of this approach is the minimal installation Concave-convex, realised in Milan in 1948 at the Galleria Borromini, presented again by the artist at a solo exhibition which the city of Milan dedicated to him in 1986, and which is now able to be seen at the Estorick Collection. Brief instructions explain how to create its characteristic cloud shape,29 for the work is comprised solely of a sheet of wire mesh, a length of fishing line and some lamps to illuminate it. The structure is hidden; the simplicity is amazing. Other aspects of the work make it equally fascinating: its natural shape, its movement, the use of light, the work’s airy quality, its design, unpredictability and, of course, the simplicity of its installation. To these characteristics must be added others which are no less important: the aforementioned low production and installation costs, its reproducibility (the work is constructed from a square template that is easily adaptable to mass production) and its freedom from packaging and clutter (the piece being easily transportable). The end result is a work of art created from almost nothing: a lesson in simplicity that is in contrast with the prevailing cliché that defines as important only what is expensive – often artificially so – and not vice versa, or which becomes expensive over time.

be appreciated. As in every successful attempt to educate others, coherence of attitude is worth more than a thousand words, enabling one to be more effective, valued and even emulated. In a world where the artist increasingly resembles the manager of a factory, where the work-object is artificially made unique (so as not to be confused with a novelty from the gift shop), but at the same time produced in commercial quantities in order to satisfy constant, increasing incentives offered by the market; in a world where the ability to surprise the mind seems almost to have vanished forever, replaced by the now inflated capacity – more apparent than real – to provoke at any cost, what sense is there in pursuing one’s own creativity, imagination, or poetry? In contrast to what has often been stated, Munari probably did not express the last spasms of freedom of a certain artistic tendency defined as the last avant-garde,30 and whose funeral was constantly anticipated, or perhaps even awaited and invoked, but rather a concrete way of demonstrating that another road is possible and that true freedom (or internal revolution) is determined by a coherence of thought and action. To be able to be free in the artistic sphere Munari worked as a graphic artist, graphic designer, designer, writer, theorist, visiting professor, the curator of both literary editions and exhibitions, and many other roles besides. He carried out his work in many of these areas with professional excellence, as is shown by the many awards and accolades he received.31 By contrast he was rather careless with regard to his earnings in the world of art, in which thought and creativity had to remain independent of any influence, including that of economic concerns, in order to express with total autonomy that aesthetic under analysis in the present exhibition in all its revolutionary novelty. A Futurist Italian?

A Behavioural Model Perhaps Munari can also be considered as the Futurist model of an Italian. Throughout his long career Munari never intentionally interested himself in the art market and never adopted those strategies that are rooted even in today’s young artists, aiming to endow their works with artificial value. Why? I believe, as so often happens with highly complex phenomena, that there is no single answer to this question, and that heterogeneous factors relating to both the artistic and commercial contexts are of significance in this respect: a superficial attitude on the part of critics in relation to an artist too complicated to be studied in a hurried manner; the lack of a consistent and instantly recognisable style; a quality of understatement to the point of simplicity that is often misunderstood or even devalued; and a total independence from the rites and obsessions of the market, pursued with theoretical conviction rather than a spirit of contradiction; a paradigmatic lack of interest towards the culture of sales and consumption as ends in themselves. I am convinced that among Munari’s qualities and defects one in particular cannot be attributed to him: ingenuousness. Why, then, did he consistently – and firmly – refuse to engage with mercantile logic throughout the course of his long career?

With his gentle manner, his understatement, his humour – light as a spring breeze – and his positive thinking, Munari represents the kind of Italian that all his compatriots would love to have internalised, at least partially. Dryness, irony, action understood as a process of learning, fun, imagination, multi-disciplinary knowledge, essentiality, rejection of cliché, fanciful attitudes: all these traits make Bruno Munari a contemporary, almost inimitable, character who compels us to think differently, to try and see the rainbow in profile, to understand that sunrise and sunset are the same phenomenon, seen from two opposing perspectives. In an Italy existing in a perpetual state of vacillation between conservatism and adaptability – the conditio sine qua non for survival in a ever-more rapid global era – the lightning-fast, fluid, light and creative thought of Munari reflects a very contemporary personality, almost an icon of the best that Italy has managed to produce in the past century. More than an artist of the twentieth century he seems an icon of tomorrow. An Italian of the future – that is, a Futurist.

Perhaps the most convincing explanation is that which concerns Munari’s consistency of thought and action – something that can be seen as a behavioural model and that might, eventually, be considered as something to

29 B. Munari, Il quadrato (Milan: Scheiwiller, 1960), pp. 20-21.

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30 L. Vergine, Arte programmata e cinetica (1853-1963). L’ultima avanguardia (Milan: Mazzotta, 1983). 31 Compasso d’Oro for design, 1954, 1955, 1979 and 1995 (career achievement); Honourable Mention, Academy of Sciences of New York, 1974; Andersen Prize, 1974 (Best Children’s Author); Japan Prize, Design Foundation, 1985 (‘for the pronounced human value of his design’); Lego Prize, 1986 (‘for his exceptional contribution to the development of children’s creativity’); Premio Accademia dei Lincei, 1988 (for graphics); Honorary Member, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.; Laurea ad honorem in Architecture, 1989, Università degli Studi, Genoa.

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How Could it be Done Differently? Alberto Munari

In the early 1950s my father received the prototype of one of the earliest portable slide projectors designed for use by amateurs. It was vertical in shape, like the old magic lanterns or film projectors: a simple rectangular block of metal, painted grey, of about 30 x 40 x 10 cm. The interior of the instrument was divided vertically into two parts: the rear section was closed and contained a lamp with its focusing lenses, whilst the front section had two doors on opposite sides that, when opened, allowed access to a compartment housing the support for the lens, and behind this a moveable carriage into which the slides were inserted. The final model, manufactured in Italy, was subsequently marketed by Ilford in 1957 under the name of ‘Sportsman’ (see figs 1 and 2 below).1 The slides consisted of a little frame that held two small removable square panes of glass, between which the image to be projected would be sandwiched. Accordingly, each slide required at least four or five minutes of delicate manipulation to prepare it for use, involving the dismantling of the frame, the cutting of the desired image from the roll of film, the insertion of this between the two pieces of glass (from which any traces of dust or fingerprints would need to have been cleaned at an earlier stage), the reconstruction of the frame, and its positioning in the sliding mechanism, which would then be placed on its track. I remember how when my father brought this apparatus home we spent several days projecting all of the slides that we had available: family photos, travel memories and experimental images that my father liked to take with his small ‘Robot’ camera – one of the first photojournalistic cameras with automatic feed, which used 35 mm cinematographic film (see figs. 3 and 4 below).2

1 2

Images taken from: http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Ilford/Slide_Projectors.html (accessed 18 April 2012). Images taken from: http://corsopolaris.net/supercameras/robot/robot2.html (accessed 18 April 2012).

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Then, having exhausted all our photographs, my father said: ‘Now, what else could we project? What else can we put between the two glass plates other than a strip of film?’ And so we started with great enthusiasm to search for anything that could lend itself to this purpose: a piece of coloured cellophane, a transparent sweet wrapper, a piece of thin onion skin, a fragment of a plastic bag, a drop of glue… In this way, the most amazing forms and unexpected colours began to appear on the walls of the studio – images that were actually far more interesting than the photographs we had previously used. Gradually, my father and I learned to recognise those materials that would be best suited to this game and to foresee the effects they would create once projected. It was then that I fully understood the difference between a coloured pigment illuminated by reflected light, and the same colour produced by a beam of coloured light: that is to say, the difference between a subtractive and an additive synthesis, which had already been described to me at school but which I had never appreciated in so vivid and immediate a manner. Subsequently, we began to manipulate those materials in various different ways. For example, we found that strips torn from transparent, colourless plastic bags would lose their transparency along their edges and capture the iridescent tones of light – such as those visible in a patch of oil floating on the surface of water. Similarly a piece of coloured cellophane, when burned, scratched or drawn on, could reveal unexpected nuances of colour; even a small drop of clear glue could take on many different forms depending on how it was pressed between the two glass plates. This was a game of endless experimentation, occasionally interrupted by the anxious calls of my mother, reminding us that it was time for lunch or dinner.

Already being interested in photography myself, I remember how the use of 35 mm film stock at that time constituted a real revolution when compared to the 6 x 6 cm film used by the cumbersome Rolleiflex cameras, designed by the Braunschweig firm Franke and Heidecke. I read about these developments with interest in the specialised magazines of the day, for it was naturally the subject of lively debate in the world of professional photography. They were also developments that the industry found itself unprepared for, not having yet produced a user-friendly version of the new 35 mm film for use in still photography rather than cinematography. I remember how in loading the 35 mm film into the small ‘Robot’ cameras one first had to cut a piece of the correct length from a reel of film and then roll this into a special magazine supplied with the ‘Robot’ – all this, naturally, in the red light of the darkroom! It was then necessary to find a photographer sufficiently well-equipped – and willing – to develop the images contained within these strange magazines... In the era of digital photography this sounds like a process from centuries ago, when in fact we are speaking of only three generations! But let us return to those days of great excitement over the discovery of this new device. Having screened all our available slides we also tried to project the negatives of some old black and white photographs – images which had become a little ‘yellowed’ over time and which, being a different format, had to be cut down to the correct size in order to fit the frame of the slide. Having become accustomed to viewing a negative in its original size – or only slightly larger, with the aid of a magnifying glass – it was very striking to see them projected at such a scale onto the white walls of the studio. I remember how we were both a little surprised at the infinite variations of grey tones that these large images allowed us to see, giving life and emphasis to areas of shadow that had previously seemed somewhat flat.

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Accordingly, from a ‘banal’ and somewhat predictable machine, that simple projector had been transformed into fascinating tool for visual research: and not only of a static nature. Since childhood I had enjoyed collecting small glass bottles, such as those used for perfume samples, and I remembered that one of the bottles in my collection was small, rectangular, broad and rather flat. We filled this with water and managed to fit it into the projector, resting it against the track intended for the slides. Then, using a pipette from my mother’s medicine cabinet, we let a small drop of black ink fall into the water. Since the device turned the image 180° when projecting it, a rather sinister huge black cloud began to expand upwards on the white wall, resembling the characteristic ‘mushroom’ cloud generated by an atomic bomb! In this manner, the ‘static’ projector became a new, ‘dynamic’, projector capable of creating fantastic shapes in motion... I had invented a new type of film! That enthusiastic game of exploration lasted several weeks, during which we experimented with all the materials available and every possible effect. But perhaps the most significant moment was when it occurred to us to explore how those materials might react to the application of polarising filters. It had been twenty years since Edwin Land had invented the Polaroid filter, but it was only recently that they could be found on the market, albeit it at a high price, and not just as the lenses of sunglasses but also in the form of flexible polyvinyl sheets which could be cut into any shape desired. Naturally, my father – always attentive to the most recent technological developments – had already procured some of these sheets. We placed a first polarising filter just behind the track intended for the slides, and held a second in front of the projector’s lens, intercepting the light beam, which we then moved and rotated freely. I well recall the emotions we experienced seeing magnificent colours of extraordinary brilliance blossoming before our eyes and transforming themselves into countless variations of tone that covered the entire range of the spectrum. The surprise was even greater when we discovered that even a small piece of colourless

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cellophane, folded several times upon itself, contained myriad colors when polarised light was shone through it, each of which then gradually turned into its complementary colour when the filter was rotated before the lens. Again, such experiments rendered the projector ‘dynamic’, creating animated and changing forms that the cinema of the time was unable to reveal. In this way, those images that subsequently came to be known as the Direct Projections were presented to the public for the first time by my father and I on a warm autumn evening in 1953 before a large crowd at the Galleria Studio B24 on Via Borgonuovo, Milan.3 I like to remember this episode because I find it particularly emblematic of my father’s way of working. His entire artistic production, so original, varied and diverse – from abstract paintings to graphic works, from sculptures to mixed-media compositions, and from design to teaching – was always animated and driven by one simple but constant question: how could it be done differently? This was the same question that my father used to ask me when, as a child, I would proudly show him a drawing or a construction that I had just completed, or when we studied a new object or form of technology together: ‘...beautiful, ok... – he would say – but how could it be done differently? In what other ways could we achieve something? What else could be done with this?’ As I have explained in more detail in a recent essay,4 it is the same question – revised and expanded in the light of my studies on the genesis of cognitive processes – that has guided me, and continues to guide me, in my own research and reflections: why, among the countless forms that something might take – be it an object, a living being, a form of behaviour or a thought – has it taken this form and not another? If we address this question to ourselves, from the point of view of the psychologist rather than that of the artist or the biologist, we might then ask why are we the way we are, when could we have been different? Such questions force us to step outside our comfortable and habitual thought processes look beyond cultural stereotypes and venture into the wonderful and almost infinite universe of possible alternatives, opening ourselves to the charm of discovery, courage, innovation and the desire for excellence. These are the kind of questions that have animated, and still animate, the greatest scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs. Every great innovation in science, technology or art is the brainchild of someone who has not been content to accept things as they are, but has instead asked: how could it be done differently?

3 This was reviewed by the journal Domus in issue number 291, which appeared the following year. 4 ‘Morfogenesi e conoscenza’, in P. L. Amietta, D. Fabbri, A. Munari and P. Trupia, I destini cresciuti. Quattro percorsi

nell’apprendere adulto (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2011), pp. 219-301.

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Documents

A. M. Gianella, ‘Fra le arti d’eccezione – Il pittore dei “coni”’ (‘Among the Exceptional Arts - The Painter of “Cones”’) in La Domenica del Corriere, vol. 29, no. 42, 16 October 1927, Milan. ‘Bum non ha che diciannove anni ed è milanese, e si chiama, al secolo, Bruno Munari… con la b e la m minuscole come si può leggere nella sua carta da visita’ (‘Bum is only nineteen and is Milanese, and his real name is Bruno Munari... with a lowercase b and m as you can read on his business card’). 172

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‘Il suggeritore nudo’ (‘The Naked Prompter’). Futurist simultaneity in eleven syntheses by F. T. Marinetti, in Comoedia, nos. XI/ XII, 15 December 1929, illustrations by Bruno Munari. Mario Applausi, a character without an author, claims for himself as much freedom as possible: ‘Non vogliamo più suggeritori. Vivremo meglio senza consigli, senza prudenze, senza il già fatto e senza il già scritto’ (‘We do not want prompters any more. We will live better without advice, without caution, without the already-made and without the already-written’).

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Il Cantastorie di Campari Quinta raccolta (The Story-teller of Campari - Fifth Anthology), with 27 graphic figures by Bruno Munari (Milan: Campari, 1932). Printed in 1000 copies offered by the company Campari ad personam; contains love poems by Renato Simone alternating with Munariâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s illustrations.

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b c

d e

Plates from ‘Atmosfera 1933’ (‘Atmosphere 1933’), published in Almanacco Letterario (Milan: Bompiani, 1932). Titles of plates: a. Ginevra (Geneva), b. Dopo la guerra vien la pace (After War Comes Peace), c. Tendenze dell’architettura (Trends in Architecture), d. Arte moderna (Modern Art) and e. Sex Appeal.

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F. T. Marinetti, Il poema del vestito di latte (Poem of the Milk Dress), words in freedom by Marinetti, academician of Italy (Milan: Ufficio Propaganda della Snia Viscosa, 1937). Cover page and illustrations by Bruno Munari. Poetry, photography, typography and publicity art merge in his graphic work. Munari inserted a pull-out printed on transparent material.

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B. Munari, ‘Che cosa sono le macchine inutili e perchè’ (‘What Useless Machines Are and Why’), in La Lettura, vol. 37, no. 7, 1 July 1937, Milan. Translation on pp. 202-203.

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201

What Useless Machines Are and Why Let us first establish the function of the useless machines: that they are machines is not in doubt, given that the lever is a machine, commonly referred to as ‘that piece of iron over there’. However, it is necessary to clarify the word ‘useless’: they are useless because they do not make anything, they do not eliminate labour, they do not save time and money, and they do not produce any commodities. They are nothing but colourful, mobile objects, specially designed to create a specific variety of combinations, movements, shapes and colours. Objects to look at in the way one looks at a drifting group of clouds after spending seven hours inside a factory full of useful machines. The first useless machines were more complicated, with limited or disruptive movements, whilst these more recent, simplified, examples find their motors in natural phenomena such as air currents, changes of temperature, humidity, light and shadow, etc., assuming a living aspect comparable to the movements of grass in a field, the changing forms of clouds, or the rolling of a pebble in a brook. There may be very slow or very fast machines, with an infinite variety of movements, machines for the garden, for the home, to be hung from the ceiling, to float on a pond, to stand on a tabletop or a terrace, and perhaps even to carry around in one’s pocket. The important thing is that they are absolutely useless. No. 21 is a very tall machine for the garden, made of iron and wood, and is of a neutral grey colour; a red sphere located at the top of one of the three supporting legs is placed in front of a movable section of white and black forms which, when blown by the wind, turns more or less swiftly to form a mutable grey backdrop to the red ball. In the evening a soft white light illuminates this part.

coloured, for example: grey on the one side with white and red stripes on the other, or else black and white, yellow and black, different shades of colour, etc. The elongated shape characteristic of this machine allows contrary movements, revealing the many currents in a single flow of air. The F-3 machine is also for the terrace, and has a pendulum motion. The F-4 machine is for the garden and incorporates several movements: a steel wire twisted around a pole sets in motion a sculptural object; in turning, this creates air currents that mobilise another form, set into a frame. In the useless machines each piece must have its logical function both in relation to the motion and the artistic sense of proportion, colour and form; and the whole assembly must represent the harmonious fusion of sculpture, painting and motion. Sculpture is here to be understood as geometric form: an exact balance of shapes, spaces and volumes; light and dark. Painting is to be understood as colour: exact balance of colours, (a curved colour has a different value to a flat colour). Motion, in its pure state: rhythm, sense of movement; (that is: one person walking and another dancing; useful movement and useless movement) the motion of a useless machine must be the heart of the construction, the vital point. A useless machine that does not represent anything is the perfect device by means of which we can easily revive our imagination, daily afflicted by useful machines. MUNARI

Machine no. 19 is for the home and should be hung from a smooth light green ceiling, which forms the background. Three elements of different shapes and colours rotate with a slow motion around a static sphere of golden glass located at the centre. Irregular planetary motion. The RGA9 is a machine for the garden in white cement and aluminum, and requires a current of air to set it in motion. At night its phosphorescent platform illuminates the machine. Height of three metres. And what is ‘a mobile’ by Calder (this is American; Calder was a creator of animated films, and is now a constructor of useless machines which he defines as ‘my mobiles’)? A machine in iron, where two differently-coloured spheres move according to a defined trajectory, their restricted movement employing the force of gravity. Machine no. 23 is a floating object in which a black rudder moves gently around a white and red complex of masts and connecting rods. Height from one to seven metres. Next we come across a little useless machine for a tabletop, inside which is a swiftly-turning turbine with blades of white and black. The sculptural element is made from one of those pumpkins that are used by certain farmers for holding water, the moving element and the legs are made of painted wood. (No. 11). Constructed from painted wood, the F-1 machine is intended to be placed on a terrace, and has moving parts driven by the wind or the rain. It is hung with overlapping elements (no. 24). The moving forms are differently

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Colour plate by Bruno Munari from La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Italia, no. 11, November 1935, Alfieri & Lacroix, Milan, 1935.

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Cover page illustrated by Bruno Munari, La Lettura, vol. 39, no. 1, 1 January 1939, Milan.

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From the Artist’s Notebook, 1930s-1940s Unpublished notebook relating to the 1930s and ‘40s, belonging to the Jacqueline Vodoz – Bruno Danese Foundation, Milan. The notebook not only contains writings concerning a number works that were produced, but also designs for structures or Useless Machines that were presumably never realised. These annotations enable a new interpretation of the components and the development of Munari’s aesthetics.

Useless Machine of stable structure with freely-rotating movement of an element placed on top.

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207

a b

c d

a Useless Machine of stable structure with four coloured blades in freely-rotating movement. c Useless Machine with a tripod structure and two elements in freely-rotating movement. 208

b Useless Machine of stable structure with four coloured blades in freely-rotating movement. d Sculpture or environment?

a Useless Machine with two rods, three spheres and a two-sided coloured geometric form. c Two drawings of a Useless Machine.

b Abstract forms. d Sculpture with mobile element on top, concave surface and folding volumes.

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210

a b

c d

a Useless Machine with a tripod structure and two coloured mobile elements. c Detail of a Useless Machine.

a Floating Useless Machine. c Abstract drawing of simultaneous contrasts. Used for the folio Abstract Drawings by Ciuti, Fontana, Lupo, Munari, Pintor, Radice, Soldati, Steiner, Veronesi published by G. G. Gorlich, Milan, in 1944 in 400 copies.

b Useless Machine with a tripod structure and three coloured mobile elements, d Useless Machine with two coloured mobile elements and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;tensostructureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

b Working sketch for the kinetic object X Hour (1945). Green, yellow and black transparent disks applied to the hour, minute and second hands of an alarm clock against a white background. d. Drawing of tension lines. 211

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a b

c d

a-b Drawing used for the folio Abstract drawings by Ciuti, Fontana, Lupo, Munari, Pintor, Radice, Soldati, Steiner, Veronesi, Milan 1944.

a Drawing for an abstract composition. c ‘Tensostructure’ sculpture.

c Design for a ‘tensostructure’ with rotation of elements. d Abstract drawing.

b Drawing of an almost symmetric ‘tensostructure’. d Design for a fountain.

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214

a b

c d

a Design for a fountain with mobile elements. b-c Drawing of a ‘tensostructure’.

a Ciao Arp. Arp and Prampolini were the main artistic points of reference for Munari’s formative development.

d Design for the serial production of the kinetic ‘multiple’ X Hour. Produced by the company Danese in 1963 exactly as indicated in the sketch.

b Details of elements to be hung in space. c Drawings of tension lines, spatial volume. d Sketch.

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216

a b

c d

a Sketch. c Simplified version of the 1930 Aerial Machine.

a Theoretical reconstruction of an imaginary object starting from residual fragments of uncertain usage. c Abstract shapes.

b Abstract drawing or sketch of a Useless Machine. d Quasi-organic abstract form.

b Abstract shapes that recall the piece Objects Found in a Cloud (1940), collection of the Danese Foundation. d Drawing of a Useless Machine. 217

Project for the first edition of Bruno Munari’s book Le macchine di Munari (Munari’s Machines). Collage cover page, 16 pages, 12.5 x 34.5 cm. The publisher did not use this version due to its unusual format.

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Cover page of Le macchine di Munari (Munari’s Machines) (Turin: Einaudi, 1942), 21.5 x 28.5 cm, 32 pages.

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Catalogue of Munariâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solo exhibition at Galleria Borromini, Milan, 1948. Includes a contribution by D. Buzzati.

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V. Lacorazza (Leonardo Sinisgalli), ‘Le scoperte di Bruno Munari’ (‘Bruno Munari’s Discoveries’), in Civiltà delle macchine, vol. 1, no. 2, March 1953, Rome. Bi-monthly magazine edited by Leonardo Sinisgalli. Proprietà editoriale Finmeccanica, Rome.

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227

Captions

Motorcyclist (verso)

year

page

1927

pastel on paper 13 x 13 cm Private Collection

2. Motorcyclist (recto) 33 1927 pastel on paper 13 x 13 cm Private Collection

3. Cosmic Map 34 1930 tempera on card 40 x 30 cm Gambini Collection, Busto Arsizio

4. Cosmic Map 35 1930 tempera on card 40 x 30 cm Gambini Collection, Busto Arsizio

5. Walking Man 36 1931 coloured inks on card 13.5 x 15 cm Private Collection

6. Man in Movement 37 1931 tempera on card 10.8 x 14 cm Private Collection

7. At the Double

1932

watercolour on paper 17.6 x 19 cm Private Collection

8. Useless Machine

1934

pumpkin hull, wooden rods, alluminium 10 x 16 x 57 cm Private Collection

The Frame Too 40 1935 tempera on card 20 x 8.5 cm Private Collection

11. Seated Man 42 1935 tempera on card 8.5 x 11 cm with Several Hats Private Collection

12. Composition 43 1935 tempera on card 27.5 x 27.5 cm Private Collection

13. Two Figures in Movement 44 1938

pencil on paper 7 x 9.6 cm Private Collection

14. Dance on Stilts 45 1935 tempera on paper (study for a stage design) 65 x 50 cm Private Collection

15. Composition 46 1935 tempera on card 12.5 x 15 cm Private Collection

16. Tactile Board 47 1938 mixed media on wooden support 122 x 13 x 3 cm Private Collection

17. Photocollage 48 1935 photographs and printed elements 15.7 x 12.3 cm Private Collection

18. Moreover, nothing is absurd to those who fly

1930s

photocollage and ink 20 x 26.5 cm Maria Fede Caproni Archive, Rome

year

page

year

page

10. The Frame Too 41 1935 tempera on card 22 x 9 cm Private Collection

19. Misunderstood Poet 50 1933 mixed media on paper 21.8 x 27.8 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

20. And thus we would set about 51 seeking an aeroplane woman

1930s

collage on card 18 x 27 cm Private Collection

21. Organic Composition 52 1940 tempera on paper affixed to card support 8 x 8 cm Private Collection

22. Abstract Composition 52 1939 tempera on paper 15 x 14 cm Private Collection

23. Sinuous Form 53 1940 tempera on paper 25 x 17 cm (Negative-positive) Private Collection

24. Geometric Composition 54 1945

tempera on paper 13.5 x 11 cm Private Collection

25. Abstract Composition 55 1948 tempera on paper 13 x 13 cm Private Collection

26. Geometric Composition 56 1945

tempera on paper 13 x 9 cm Private Collection

27. Two Red Forms 57 1947 tempera on card 34 x 50 cm Valente ArteContemporanea, Finale Ligure

year

page

year

page

28. Sensitive no. 7 58 1947 painted wood and brass thread 25 x 43 x 29 cm Private Collection

36. Abstract Composition 66 1949 tempera on cardboard 19 x 28 cm Private Collection

29. Negative-positive 59 1950 oil on board 50 x 50 x 4 cm with Curved Lines Private Collection

37. Untitled 67 1950 tempera on paper 18 x 18 cm Nicoletta Gradella Collection, Brescia

30. Concave-covex

60 1947 metallic mesh 90 x 50 x 55 cm approx. Private Collection

1940s

iron wire, feathers, fabric, sequins 18 x 42 x 19 cm Private Collection

39. Insect 69

1940s

iron wire, fabric, burlap 32 x 23 x 20 cm Private Collection

38. Insect

31. Useless Machine 61 1947 wood and nylon 150 cm approx. diam Private Collection

32. Abstract Composition 62 1948 tempera on card 25 x 25 cm Private Collection

33. Abstract Composition 63 1948 tempera on card 25 x 25 cm Private Collection

34. Abstract Composition 64 1948 tempera on card 19 x 25 cm Private Collection

35. Abstract Composition 65 1949 tempera on card 12 x 17.5 cm Private Collection

40. Arrhythmia 70 1951 clock mechanism, iron wire, paper, feather, drinking straw, (Red Flags) bell and stone 80 x 50 x 65 cm Private Collection

1940-53

iron, gramophone mechanism, aluminium sheets 60 x 30 x 113 cm approx. Private Collection

41. Useless Machine (Arrhythmic Carousel)

42. Arrhythmia (Butterfly and Little Snake)

72 1951 clock mechanism, steel cable, cellophane, red thread and bell, private collection 64 x 100 x 37 cm Private Collection

43. Arrhythmia

73 1951 clock mechanism, steel cable, stell thread, bell and red plume, 125 cm length Private Collection

year

page

year

page

44. Yellow Points 74 1942 oil on masonite 49 x 36 cm Private Collection

52. rRrR 106 c.1927 (Sound of an Aeroplane)

ink and collage on paper 27 x 38 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

45. Direct Projection 75 1950 slide 3.6 x 2.4 cm Private Collection

53. Study for a children’s book 107 1935

tempera and collage on punched paper 10 x 6.29 cm Private Collection

vintage silver gelatin print 7.7 x 12.7 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

46. Negative-positive 76

1950-87

acrylic on board 60 x 60 cm Nicoletta Gradella Collection, Brescia

54. The Hypercritic

47. Negative-positive 77

1950-87

acrylic on board 80 x 80 cm Candioli Zeni Collection, Rovereto

55. The Elderly Pilot on Leave 109 1930s

photocollage, airbrush, pencil and ink 14.5 x 21 cm Maria Fede Caproni Archive, Rome

with Ricas photocollage on card 17.3 x 23.4 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

108

1930s

48. Red and Black

c. 1940

tempera on paper 36 x 36.5 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

56. ...They have even invented this, the world has gone mad...

49. Geometric Forms

c. 1930

mixed media on cardboard 31.5 x 43.2 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

57. L’Ala d’Italia 111 1934 with Ricas photocollage and tempera on paper 21.5 x 28.5 cm Maria Fede Caproni Archive, Rome

50. Useless Machine 80 1945 wood and nylon 180 cm h., 80 cm approx. diam. Jacqueline Vodoz and Bruno Danese Foundation, Milan

58. The Age of Balloons

110

112

59. Untitled 113 51. Negative-positive 81

1950-77

acrylic on canvas 141 x 141 cm Papani Valentini Collection, Rovereto

1930s

c.1930

mixed media on card 28 x 31 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

vintage silver gelatin print 12.7 x 17.7 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

c. 1930

with Ricas photocollage and mixed media on card 16.2 x 19.3 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

61. Forces of the Empire

115 1936 photocollage and mixed media 47 x 65.5 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

62. Aeroplanes and Archers

116

63. Aeroplanes in Formation

117

64. Here I Am Briefly

118

65. The Poetic Joy of Flight 119

year

page

year

page

60. At the Heart of Flight 114

1934

photocollage and mixed media on card 18.3 x 16.6 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

69. Brief Guide 123 c. 1935 (graphic design for a tourist guide for Studio Boggeri)

photocollage on cardboard 54 x 27 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

68. Shell

122

1932

with Ricas photocollage and mixed media on card 24.8 x 34.8 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

70. Study for Snia Viscosa

124

1935

tempera on paper 24 x 32.5 cm Private Collection

1930s

with Ricas photocollage on card 15.7 x 19.2 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

71. Study for Snia Viscosa

125

1935

tempera on paper 24 x 33 cm Private Collection

1936

photocollage and ink 15 x 24 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

72. T 126 1935 photocollage, tempera and paper 18 x 25 cm (study for an advertisement Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, in the journal Campo Grafico) New York

1930s

vintage silver gelatin print 7.7 x 12.7 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

66. Motors and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Victory of the Airâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

120

1934

vintage silver gelatin print 41 x 60 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

67. Bombardament of New York

121

1942

vintage silver gelatin print and tempera 30 x 46 cm Private Collection

73. Gears

127 1935 collage and mixed media on card 21.5 x 28 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

74. Rectangles

128 1930 mixed media on card 21.9 x 33 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

75. Berlin Olympics

129

1936

lithograph 60 x 80 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

130

c. 1936

photocollage and mixed media on paper 15.6 x 36.2 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

77. Composition for the journal L’Ala d’Italia

131

c. 1936

photocollage and mixed media on paper 15.6 x 36.2 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

78. Biro ‘The Ballpoint Pen’

132

1950

lithograph 70 x 100 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

79. Butterfly (Birograph)

133

1948

ball-point pen on paper 18,7 x 14,8 cm Private Collection

80. Textile design

134

81. Textile design

135

82. Textile design

136

83. Textile design

137

84. Textile design

138

1950s

tempera on paper 23 x 25 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri tempera on card 30 x 40 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri tempera on paper 25 x 47 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri tempera on paper 51.4 x 69 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive. New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri pencil and tempera on paper 30 x 40 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive. New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri

year

page

year

page

76. Composition for the journal L’Ala d’Italia

85. Textile design

139

1950s

pencil and tempera on paper 31 x 44.5 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri

86. Textile design

140

1950s

felt-tip pen and acrylic on glossy paper 35 x 42.5 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri

87. Textile design

141

1950s

tempera su card 32.5 x 48 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York Provenance: Studio Boggeri

88. Moto Guzzi Bilancio 142 1955

photocollage on card 16 x 21.5 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

89. Cow

143

mixed media on card 23 x 26 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

90. Meo Cat, Pirelli

144

1949

foamrubber variable dims Private Collection

91. Zizì the Monkey, Pirelli

145

1952

foamrubber variable dims Nicoletta Gradella Collection, Brescia

92. Industry

146

93. Agip

147

c.1950

c. 1950

vintage silver gelatin print 21.5 x 30 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

c.1950

vintage silver gelatin print 23 x 16.5 cm Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive, New York

Silvana Editoriale Spa via Margherita De Vizzi, 86 20092 Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, Italy tel. + 39 02 61 83 63 37 fax +39 02 61 72 464 www.silvanaeditoriale.it Reproductions, printing and binding by Arti Grafiche Amilcare Pizzi Spa Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, Italy Printed August 2012