BRUNO MUNARI EXPLORING THE IDEA OF CHAIR

"Scatola di Architettura," 1963-2003
Starting with the square, circle and triangle, in an age when sophisticated materials took center stage, Munari shows how simplicity of means may result in poetry. From lamps to "animated" children’s books, his attitude of whimsy and sheer inventive imagination proves capable of delighting the child in all of us.

This writer remembers entering Studio Danese in Milano more than forty years ago and asking if one could buy items designed by Munari and his partner, Enzo Mari. The woman who met me was taken aback that an "Americana" would come from California to ask such a question. Of course, she allowed me to see the products at hand. I already treasured a Munari letter opener that in retrospect seems like a pre-Frank Gehry design, a stainless steel ripple of sheer delight for the hand which I’d picked up at the Museum of Modern Art’s bookstore at the time. It was not that Munari and Mari’s designs were not known, but their name was not "indelibly stamped" on their products like star material. It was not like a Gehry or Michael Graves design today, distinctive in detail and recognizably linked to the architect or designer. It was a product.

But Munari did not create "products," he created great design that consistently transcends utility. From the early days of joining the Futurists, creating posters and poems, to thinking in three dimensions, and creating experimental travel sculptures, simple yet exquisite lamps, or children’s books with vellum overlays, in all these endeavors he expressed his thesis that "Creativity is an end use of fantasy--indeed of fantasy and invention--in a global sense." He was a designer ahead of his time, creating Libri illegibili (Unreadable books), useless machines, travel sculptures, Xeroxes, and those wonderful books which may be examined in the facility’s library as a satellite exhibit of the art gallery.

Thanks to Edizioni Corraini, many of the books have been reprinted, including a remarkable architectural box which gives children a chance to build their own fantastic structures, reflecting the artist’s habit of creating workshops for children from 1977 onward. The evidence here confirms Munari’s exceptional ability to stimulate surprise, irony, harmony, and the playfulness which emanates throughout his work. Judith Hofberg