Galleria 10 A.M. Art will be hosting a show devoted to the work of Bruno Munari (1907-1998

BRUNO MUNARI

Creatore di forme

Curated by Luca Zaffarano

The show deals with the complexity of the experimental research of one of the most significant artists on the twentieth century Italian art scene.

It presents a series of such historical works as a Macchina Aritmica, 1951; an example of the Concavo-Convesso pieces; a 1956 Macchina Inutile; a Scultura da viaggio; a 1965 prototype of Tetracono; some Xerografie Originali, and much more besides.

From 25 May to 23 June 2018, the Galleria 10 A.M. Art (31, Via Anton Giulio Barrili, Milan) will be hosting a show devoted to the work of #brunomunari (1907-1998), one of the most significant artists on the twentieth century Italian art scene.

The show, curated by Luca Zaffarano, and titled Creatore di forme (The Creator of Forms) deals with the complexity of the experimental research of Munari; in particular it identifies as one of the central points of his work how a form can transform itself into another one.

Munari’s installations have the capacity to create mobile performances, changeable forms full of accidents and for this very reason able to transport the viewer into a spectacular and imaginative world.

This overview presents a series of historical works, such as a Macchina Aritmica, 1951; an example of the Concavo-Convesso pieces, not seen since the anthological show at Palazzo Reale in 1986; and a Macchina Inutile from 1956. These all lead us to closer contact with the multiform poetics of the “machine” as an essential, delicate, and diverting scenic apparatus.

In a wholly complementary manner, Munari also developed his research into the dynamism of forms in the field of perception. The artist carefully avoided showing a composition fixed in a certain moment and created, instead, dynamic, unstable, and complex paintings. In the show it will be possible to appreciate a prototype, a unique example, of Tetracono, 1965; some Negativo-positivo works on panel dating from the early 1950s; and the chromo-kinetic paintings made with polarising filters, seen here in the form of a Polariscop from the 1960s.

At times a change of form was obtained by overturning the function. This is the case of the Sculture da viaggio, of which there is a rare 1958 example in varnished foil on show, accompanied by the corresponding cardboard sculpture. These sculptures were conceived to be folded up like origami and placed in a suitcase. Once removed from their container and opened up, they take shape and instantly develop into a three-dimensional object. In addition to these works are a further three of the most successful of the series of acrylic works Colori nella Curva di Peano, 1974, which have a, theoretically infinite, variation of colours within the structure of a fractal curve.

The exhibition is rounded off by a series of important examples of the Xerografie Originali, made in the 1960s and which exploit the idea of moving patterns of various kinds while the photocopying machine is still scanning; in this way there were obtained deformed images, made unique by an unrepeatable creative act.

Critical awareness of Bruno Munari’s work has grown constantly. This is confirmed by the recent exhibitions in Italy, after the important show at the Estorick Collection in London in 2012, the travelling show planned for this year in Japan, and the recent acquisitions by such important museums as, for example, the Pompidou in Paris.

Luca Zaffarano has written, “His art is an open-source, one without secrets. The methods of his art research are clearly explained, and the projects and processes described in detail. His art is a creative challenge that is still valid and that pushes us towards receptiveness to and the sharing of planning and poetic stimuli. For Munari, artists have an important social function, and aesthetics are a necessary condition for a better understanding of our relationship with the world and with nature.”

Catalogue by edizioni 10 A.M. Art.

Bruno Munari: Biographical note

Bruno Munari started out very young, towards the end of the 1920s, as part of the Futurist movement. Backed by Marinetti and Prampolini, he soon became known for the creation of his Macchine Inutili, mobile works devised before those of Calder and that, even though reminiscent of the areal works by the Russian Constructivists Rodchenko and Ioganson, can be interpreted as “cinematic machines” where the light and the random movement of the forms allows the generation of series of images and the definition of immersive settings.

In that period Milan was a crossroads of important ideas as well as of Futurist initiatives. In the 1930s Munari mainly worked as a graphic designer, often eluding, with a refined sense of humour, Fascist censorship. In the summer of 1944, under wartime bombings, he published Fotocronache, an enjoyable and witty essay on the role of photojournalism, photography, and art. For the Mondadori publishing house in the following year he reinvented children’s books, while for adults he created the Libri Illeggibili with pages that were transparent, with holes, torn, or sewn with threads of cotton.

The post-war years saw his most creative period. He founded the Movimento #arte Concreta (M.A.C.) in opposition to figurative and lyrical abstract painting which he considered to be without planning behind them. In his first important solo show in 1948 he created an environment centred on a fluid and natural form suspended from the ceiling, in semi-darkness, to which he gave the name Concavo-Convesso. In 1950 he made his Proiezioni dirette, tiny mixed media compositions inside slides and which he projected in a continuous loop at MoMa, New York, in the autumn of 1955, a work that developed the dematerialisation of painting. In the same years he answered the challenge of Mondrian’s orthogonal compositions with his Negativo-positivo series, abstract compositions in which the forms interlocked, causing the contraposition of background and figures to be superseded.

In 1962, sponsored by Olivetti, he organised the famous exhibition of #arte Programmata that was to be seen in the United States and then in Europe. He directed some brief research films and planned works that were developed through modular aggregations in space (Strutture Continue, Acona Biconbi) or as the result of interactive modifications (Flexy, Tetracono, Polariscop).

In 1963 he was the first artist to make use of Xerox photocopying machines to produce original works with images of forms and textures in movement. Thanks to this new technological upgrading, his Xerografie Originali can now be interpreted as the natural evolution of the photograms created in the 1930s by various abstract artists.

Towards the end of the 1960s Munari made use of the paradox of curved lines, as defined by the mathematician Peano, to make a formal inquiry into fractal curves, long before Mandelbrot had indentified them as such. Within these Curve di Peano Munari inserted coloured rhythms and textures. In 1976 he directed his first workshop for children, and during his career he published more than one hundred books.

BRUNO MUNARI. Creatore di forme

Galleria 10 A.M. Art (31, Via Anton Giulio Barrili, Milan)

25 May – 23 June 2018

Opening: Thursday 24 May 2018 at 6 p.m.

Opening hours: from Tuesday to Friday, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Free entry

Information: tel. 02.92889164; info@10amart.it; www.10amart.it