Bruno Munari's colorful world of projections in an exhibition of previously unseen

From July 10 to July 31, 2020, the Trevi Center in Bolzano hosts the exhibition Fixed Light Projections and Polarized Light Projections by Bruno Munari, the second part of the Munari - In Motion project, curated by Miroslava Hajek and Manuel Canelles. The exhibition features a group of works by Bruno Munari (Milan, 1907 - 1998), the Fixed Light Projections and the Polarized Light Projections, created in the 1950s, with which the artist brings to fruition his research aimed at conquering a new spatiality beyond the two-dimensional reality of the work.

The Projections are part of a line of thought that has two important goals: to dematerialize painting by creating environments of light and to offer the viewer a multiplicity of images that are no longer static. The Direct Projections, created starting in 1950 and made with different materials inserted in small slide frames, are in direct relation to the works made at the Bauhaus school (“they are not color photographs, they are direct projections of materials,” Munari himself specified). Single or multiple Direct Projections are only the first step in a research that leads him, first, to Continuous Focus Projections, where the material emerges from the slide, allowing the creation of different images depending on the different focus and, finally, to Polarized Light Projections, which represent an absolute novelty in the field of chromo-kinetic research. The effect of Polaroid film becomes visible by placing colorless material between a set of filters; in particular, with the rotating movement of the one closest to the observer, a virtual movement of the composition created by the artist is created. Munari designs both projections with the rotation of the polarizing filter in front of the projector lens and lightboxes with and without a motor, named Polariscop by the artist.

The material on display in Bolzano had hitherto remained unpublished: it is an exceptional body of art that has been collected over the years while Munari was still alive and has now been made usable through a digitization process. The works have been collected, studied and preserved by Miroslava Hajek, an art historian, curator and gallery owner, at the suggestion of Munari himself, in the critical analysis of his artistic work, and with which the artist realizes the reasoned collection of his works structured in a chronological manner capable of describing his entire creative path.

The exhibition opens daily from 3 to 6 p.m. To learn more, you can visit the Trevi Center website.

Image: Bruno Munari, Glass windows with polarized light (1953; various materials). Courtesy Miroslava Hajek

Bruno Munari's colorful world of projections in an exhibition of previously unseen

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