Designer Desire: Bruno Munari

Montage of Bruno Munari designs

Bruno Munari (1907-1998) is probably as close as you’d get to an all-encompassing creative. Born in Milan, he was a graphic designer, industrial & product designer, children’s toy designer, painter, sculptor, film-maker, book illustrator & author and educator.

In the 30s & 40s, he worked as art director on Tempo Magazine, Grazia and for a short while, Domus. He also later became a consultant on the fledgling Epoca Magazine. In 1948, he was one of the founder members of Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC), the Italian concrete art movement.

He designed for many of the top Italian design houses including Danese Milano, Olivetti, Pirelli, Robots and Zanotta. For Danese, he created the iconic Falkland suspension lamp and Cubo ashtray (both shown in the montage above). For Zanotta, he created the whimsical Singer chair – described by the company as a, “Chair for very brief visits”.

There are many books by and about Munari available on Abe Books and Amazon.

Art shall not be separated from life: things that are good to look at, and bad to be used, should not exist. Bruno Munari, 1966

Portrait of Bruno Munaricredit

Additional image credits:
1stDibs | Pamono

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.