Invention, Creativity and Imagination in Visual Communications
By Bruno Munari. Translation and annotations by Jeffrey Schnapp.
The first-ever English translation of Bruno Munari’s classic treatise on creativity, replete with new contextualizing annotations
“But isn’t imagination also fantasy? And can’t fantastic images also assume the form of sounds? Musicians speak of sonic images, sound objects. How does one invent a fish tale, an air-cooled engine, a new plastic? ... fantasy, invention, creativity think; imagination sees.” Never before translated into English, Bruno Munari’s Fantasy, originally published in Italian in 1977, invites the reader to explore their own imagination, creativity and fantasy through a journey into Munari’s mind and work. His theory of creativity, developed in conversation with the Reggio Emilia Approach (a self-guided approach to education) and the work of Jean Piaget (a Swiss developmental psychologist who proffered a theory termed “genetic epistemology”) foregrounds the book’s journey through Munari’s design processes, both working for clients and teaching design principles to children. By turning both life and work into a classroom, Munari unlocks a path through imagination in order to access his, and in turn the reader’s, deepest sense of play. The facsimile reprint is accompanied by new contextual annotations by Munari scholar and design historian Jeffrey Schnapp. These microinterventions highlight the innovations that make this work as relevant today as when originally published. Bruno Munari (1907–98) was an Italian artist, designer and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in Modernism, Futurism and Concrete art, as well as to nonvisual arts (literature, poetry) through his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning and creativity.
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It would be very hard to convey just how excited we are to announce Inventory Press’s new, first-ever English translation / facsimile edition of Bruno Munari’s beloved 1977 treatise on creativity, Fantasy. “A study on fantasy will seem to many an impossible task,” Munari writes. “For some, fantasy is caprice, oddity, extravagance. For others it is fiction, that which is false, an illusion, an imagining, a superstition. For some peasants a fantasia is a folk dance; for others a hallucination, a fixation, a whim. It can be understood as a reverie, a phantasmagoria, an inspiration, or a form of transport. For the military, it is an occasional exercise to be performed when the usual rigorous rulebook isn’t in force. Fantasy is also irregularity, aimless tinkering. And if that weren’t already enough, isn’t invention also fantasy? And isn’t fantasy also invention?” Featured photograph is from the chapter on stimuli for creativity. Other illustrations represent Surrealist artworks, a ship in a bottle, an exceptional bonsai tree and the imprint of an oak leaf, to name just a few. continue to blog
Fantasy Invention, Creativity and Imagination in Visual Communications
Published by Inventory Press. By Bruno Munari. Translation and annotations by Jeffrey Schnapp.
The first-ever English translation of Bruno Munari’s classic treatise on creativity, replete with new contextualizing annotations
“But isn’t imagination also fantasy? And can’t fantastic images also assume the form of sounds? Musicians speak of sonic images, sound objects. How does one invent a fish tale, an air-cooled engine, a new plastic? ... fantasy, invention, creativity think; imagination sees.”
Never before translated into English, Bruno Munari’s Fantasy, originally published in Italian in 1977, invites the reader to explore their own imagination, creativity and fantasy through a journey into Munari’s mind and work. His theory of creativity, developed in conversation with the Reggio Emilia Approach (a self-guided approach to education) and the work of Jean Piaget (a Swiss developmental psychologist who proffered a theory termed “genetic epistemology”) foregrounds the book’s journey through Munari’s design processes, both working for clients and teaching design principles to children. By turning both life and work into a classroom, Munari unlocks a path through imagination in order to access his, and in turn the reader’s, deepest sense of play.
The facsimile reprint is accompanied by new contextual annotations by Munari scholar and design historian Jeffrey Schnapp. These microinterventions highlight the innovations that make this work as relevant today as when originally published.
Bruno Munari (1907–98) was an Italian artist, designer and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in Modernism, Futurism and Concrete art, as well as to nonvisual arts (literature, poetry) through his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning and creativity.
