Bruno Munari

“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.

One of the last surviving members of the Futurist generation, Bruno Munari (1907–98) was the enfant terrible of Italian art and design for most of the 20th century. In addition to his work as an artist and designer, Munari was a prolific bookmaker and authored some 40-odd books in his lifetime, ranging from Futurist manifestoes to design manuals to children’s books. Although these books have been widely read and translated into many languages, his incredible achievements in other mediums have yet to be gathered into a single collection.
This volume, originally published in 1987 and designed by Munari himself, was the first comprehensive account of his remarkable and vast oeuvre. Now available as a facsimile of the original edition—save for the updated cover—the book explores Munari’s relationship to the artistic trends of his times, his attention to the world of children and didactics, and the many other peculiarities that made Bruno Munari such an original figure. The hundreds of illustrations recreate Munari’s relentless inventiveness, his love of irony, chance and humor, his intensely experimental orientation and constantly fresh approach to new technologies and materials.
Bruno Munari (1907–98) was born in Milan, where he remained for most of his life. He was a proponent of the Italian Futurist movement, and one of the founders of Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC)—the Italian movement for Concrete art.

From drawings, designs, collages, paintings, sculptures, readable and not-so-readable books to new image reproduction techniques, industrial design, editorial graphics, architecture and new pedagogical ideas, the scope of Bruno Munari's (1907–98) activities is dauntingly vast. This book accordingly approaches his output as a universe of its own, eschewing analyses of style and development in favor of offering a journey through the “total art” of Munari.

Accompanying a 2017 exhibition at the Museo Ettore Fico in Turin, and including more than 500 reproductions, interviews with Munari and a critical essay, this book is a visual cornucopia and an exciting testimony to the diversity and originality of Bruno Munari’s art.