At MUST in Vimercate, an exhibition investigates the complex figure of Bruno Munari

From January 28 to April 30, MUST in Vimercate is dedicating an exhibition to the figure of Bruno Munari (Milan, 1907 - 1998), a great artist and designer: Munari, Art to the Future is a selection of about fifty works from private Italian and foreign collections, highlighting his extraordinary importance in the international art scene and his role as a great precursor of trends and research. The exhibition, curated by Simona Bartolena and with the scientific contribution of Luca Zaffarano, has the collaboration of Armando Fettolini and Ponte 43.

From futurism to useless machines, from concrete abstraction to painting with light, there is no shortage of famous examples of Munari’s interaction with the world of communication, such as the large red poster for Campari. The itinerary proceeds in sections, with insights into the artist’s main areas of reflection: from dynamism to the study of perception, from the transformation of the idea of painting to the use of technology, from the concept of “concrete art” to experimentation with new materials.

The exhibition begins with the section The Futurist Legacy. Bruno Munari did not like to talk about his Futurist "origins," although the roots of his research lie precisely in Marinetti’s movement. Attracted above all by Prampolini’s work, Munari glimpsed the limits of Futurism from his early years of collaboration with the group’s artists. In particular, he immediately felt the need to go beyond the classical techniques still used by the group’s artists to represent the movement. Also deep and complex is his relationship with Dadaism, from which he inherits an interest in collage and photomontage. Again, however, Munari differs significantly from the demands of the movement: of Dada he espouses the irony but rejects the destructive charge and nihilistic vocation. The works in the exhibition investigate these links with the historical Avant-gardes, highlighting their affinities and divergences. The second section, The Useless Machines and the Concave-Convexes, addresses the theme of Munari’s machines, which ironically declare themselves “useless.” The machine becomes a means of studying the relationship between space and time, the concept of randomness, the search for balance, the representation of the dynamism of an object and the desire to offer the viewer an engaging enjoyment of the work of art. The same dynamism is sought in the Concave-Convex series, works to be hung from the ceiling obtained by folding a metal mesh. Again the sculpture is free to move in space and casts shifting shadows: in fact it is one of the first installations in the history of Italian art.

In the third section Abstractionism and Concrete Art, we discuss the role of Bruno Munari, founder of MAC Movimento Arte Concreta, in his quest to explore the possibilities of abstract form. Concrete Abstractionism frees itself from any narrative residue, focusing exclusively on the relationship between form, color and rhythm. The fourth is instead devoted to Travel Sculptures, which originated in the early 1950s as folding sculptures, given as gifts or sent as greeting cards. They will later become emblematic works of the artist’s production: very modern because they are transportable, light, and innovative, they fully express Munari’s desire to make a new art, “that better fits today’s life.” More original examples from the 1950s will be on display in the exhibition. The fifth section is entitled Painting with Light: painting for Munari is no longer a static image, but a multiplicity of images in constant mutation (“Painting can also disappear as long as art remains”). Exploiting a new material, the Polaroid filter, he creates kaleidoscopic and iridescent works: the Polariscops. A research that will also lead him to experiment with Direct Projections and Polarized Projections. In the exhibition, visitors will have the opportunity to understand how a Polariscop works, but also - thanks to an immersive environment, created for the occasion - to experience the fruition of these dematerialized works, made with light, engaging and fascinating, which move painting into a new space-time dimension. With projections Munari once again anticipated experiences destined for an important evolution in the following decades, still very much in vogue today.

The sixth section, Xerocopies, will explore Munari’s experiments with the Rank Xerox photocopier, marketed, with great success, in 1949. Ten years later a fully automated variant was released. In the early 1960s Munari began to use the photocopying machine as an expressive tool, in effect distorting its function: he transformed, in fact, an object created to make replicated images into a means of creating unique and original works. To make his artistic xerocopies, Munari moves images or textures on the photocopier’s platen during the scanning time, thus exploiting this new technology for unusual and unexpected purposes.

Then there is a section entitled The Design in which the relationship between design and art for Munari is addressed, which is constant, complex and investigated in depth, both in his texts and through the creation of works that contaminate the two languages. On display - in addition to works such as fabric collages - will be a number of objects designed by the artist with mass production in mind. The relationship with the world of design and production will also be explored in its different aspects with educational panels. Finally, the last section is titled Publishing and Advertising: examples of Munari’s interaction with the world of communication (both in the form of his collaboration with magazines and publishing products, the idea of the book as an art object, and the development of new graphic forms of page layout and the use of fonts and images) cannot be missed in the exhibition. In particular, one room will be devoted to his work for Campari. Present in the exhibition will be, in fact, the large red poster and a series of collages and studies for advertising (some also unpublished) from the collection of Galleria Campari.

Enriching the exhibition is a space dedicated to experimental workshops offered to schools and children. Every Saturday afternoon, at 4 p.m., there will be special guided tours conducted by expert museum staff. In addition to the workshops conducted at MUST, the educational proposal also sees the collaboration of the Civic Library with readings dedicated to children, as well as meetings and lectures by the curators. The Bruno Munari Method Experimentation Workshops for MUST Museo del Territorio take place under the planning, training and supervision of Associazione Bruno Munari (ABM) and are scientifically supervised by Silvana Sperati. The exhibition is part of the museum’s permanent itinerary, and admission to the exhibition also allows visitors to visit the museum tour.

The exhibition opens on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets (exhibition+museum): full 5 euros, reduced 3 euros (Vimercate residents, young people 15 to 24 years old), free for under 14 and people with disabilities. Guided tours every Saturday at 4 pm (2 euros extra), with curator Simona Bartolena on Feb. 18 at 5 pm (6 euros extra), for organized groups 5 euros per person, minimum 15 people, for schools 4 euros per pupil, reduced 2 euros for Vimercate schools.

Declares Simona Bartolena, curator of the exhibition, “The definition of ’artist’ to Munari goes a bit narrow: endowed with imagination, imagination, inventiveness and speculative intelligence, he put his many talents at the service of design, a new pedagogical concept and the visual arts, letting the boundaries between these categories be in constant osmosis, in a mutual and very fruitful exchange. All the more necessary, then, is the action of popularizing his artistic production that has been being carried out for years and with great wisdom by such realities as that of the Bruno Munari Association (ABM) and that of Luca Zaffarano’s Munart project. And to which, we hope, this exhibition can contribute.”

“From a historical point of view, both because of the enormous amount of work that has been done and because of the absence of a well-defined style,” says Luca Zaffarano, “Munari has repeatedly been the subject of exhibitions whose curatorship has limited to observing him from a specific point of view, or, at the opposite extreme, he has been exhibited in his complexity without any guideline capable of orienting the reading of his multiform body of works.”

“The decision to narrate the artistic production of Bruno Munari,” stresses Elena Lah, councilor for city promotion, “has in itself the desire on the part of the municipal administration to bring art closer to a wide audience, one that wants to overcome the limits of what it does not know in order to play with art, as Munari himself did. The exhibition has a popular approach and is flanked by in-depth events dedicated to children and adults, to discover together how reality is imbued with beauty, if only we put on the right lenses.”

“In the exhibition,” highlights Silvana Sperati, president of ABM - Associazione Bruno Munari, “a space has been set up and a project of experiences outlined that is useful for offering children the opportunity to come into contact with the artist’s didactic suggestions. In the workshop they will come into contact with the approach suggested by Munari, which in fact retraces the mode and style that he himself put in place in his artistic making. An opportunity to ignite and renew curiosity, discovering the pleasure of making.” The exhibition will be open from Jan. 28 to April 30, with a special free admission opening on Jan. 28.

At MUST in Vimercate, an exhibition investigates the complex figure of Bruno Munari

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.