Munari total artist

The exhibition illustrates the polyhedral creative activity of Bruno Munari (Milano 1907–1998), one of the most important figures of 20th century international art and culture. The display highlights his many-sided research and original experimentation, offering to the public the wide range of his creative works: drawings, projects, collages, paintings, sculptures, “unreadable books”, new techniques of image reproduction, industrial design objects, editorial graphics works, only to mention the most representative disciplines in his project of synthesis of arts.

  Starting from the belief that Munari’s wide-ranging work cannot be defined according to art trends and style typologies, the showcase is focused on the idea of a total art, sum of approaches and cognitive relationships which reveal the pleasure of communicating, the rigour and simplicity of the forms and the criticism of artistic conventions, with the irony needed to practise imagination from multi-sided perspectives.

“Art is continuous research – Munari wrote – assimilation of past experiences and the addition of new experiences in form, contents, materials, techniques and means.” This approach allows to grasp the dialectics between experimental and didactic action, the idea of imagination and the idea of creativity, innovation and playfulness, and especially the awareness of a universe of possible choices, a constant tendency to interpret the images in an always different way. The act of observing the things of life is foundamental not only to understand their origin, but also to evaluate any possible reaction through the perceptive displacement they provoke in the observer. “Retaining the spirit of infancy for a lifetime – also Munari wrote – means retaining the curiosity to know, the pleasure of understanding, the will to communicate.” The non-individualist artist acts with an eye towards the community, is determined to help it grow culturally and express itself with free creativity.

until 11 june 2017
Bruno Munari. Artista totale
curated by Claudio Cerritelli
MEF – Museo Ettore Fico
via Francesco Cigna 114, Turin