Bruno Munari He was born on 24 October 1907 in Milan. After a few years his family emigrated to the Polesine where the artist spent his youth.
In 1926, he returned to Milan immediately coming into contact with the artists of the Futurist movement.
From there he began his artistic and professional career
- 1927 He begins to exhibit his works in the collective exhibitions organized by the Futurist movement in Italy and in Europe.
- 1928 With Aligi Sassu signs the manifesto on “Dynamism and Muscular Painting”, celebrating a new mechanical world with youthful enthusiasm.
- 1929 Begins to work in advertising. With Gino Severini, Luigi Russolo, Fortunato Depero, Giacomo Balla, Enrico Prampolini and others he took part in the group exhibition Pittori Futuristi Italiani at the Galleria 23 in Paris. He contributes to found the Lombardo Radio – Futurist Group which debuts with a collective exhibition in Varese.
- 1930 Creates the Aerial Machine and starts designing Useless Machines. He takes part in the XVII Venice Biennale. With Ricas (Riccardo Castagnedi) he opened the Studio R + M graphic studio and began to collaborate with many magazines such as: La Lettura, Natura, The Modern Office and The Wing of Italy.
- 1931 Participates in the First Rome Quadrennial.
- 1932 Participates in the XVIII Venice Biennale.
- 1933 Exhibits photograms, photomontages and photo collages in a Futurist photography exhibition organized by F. T. Marinetti in Rome.
- 1934 He exhibits his first Useless Machine in a Futurist exhibition, attracting the attention of Depero and Marinetti. Participates in the XIX Biennale of Venice. Buy the only painting sold by the Galleria del Milione in Milan on the occasion of Kandinsky’s first exhibition in Italy.
- 1935 He becomes co-director with Ricas of the Ufficio Moderno magazine. He began working with Studio Boggeri and published the book Palette of Typographic Possibilities. Participates in the 2nd Rome Quadriennale.
- 1936 Participates in the XX Venice Biennale.
- 1937 Illustrates the Poem of the Milk Dress by Marinetti.
- 1939 Works as artistic director of Tempo magazine. Participates in the III Rome Quadrennial.
- 1940 He exhibits Metaphysical Objects at the Galleria del Milione in Milan where the poet Salvatore Quasimodo, the future Nobel Prize for literature, presents his work.
- 1942 Publishes Munari’s book The Machines.
- 1944 For the publisher Domus publishes the book Fotocronache. Personal exhibition of abstract paintings at the Ciliberti Gallery in Milan.
- 1945 Using the spring movement of an alarm clock, he designed the kinetic Ora-X multiple, which was then produced by the Danish company in Milan in 1963.
- 1946 In Paris at the first Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, a review of concrete art, it exhibits the Concavo-convex environment.
- 1947 Participates in the exhibition Abstract and Concrete Art in Milan, the first exhibition of concrete art organized in Europe since the end of the war.
- 1948 Participates in the foundation of the Concrete Art Movement (M.A.C.) with Gianni Monnet, Gillo Dorfles and Atanasio Soldati. He exhibits the Useless Machines and the Concave-convex in the personal exhibition at the Borromini Gallery in Milan. The series of Negative-positive paintings begins in which the distinction between figure and background is canceled, creating an effect of perceptive instability.
- 1949 For the Italian company Pirelli designs the Gatto Meo, a moldable toy in foam rubber.
- 1950 He continues his work with the M.A.C. Realize the Projections of Light using poor material of various types, transparent or semi-transparent. Personal exhibition of illegible books at the Salto bookstore in Milan. These books are born as unique specimens and tell visual stories without words through lines, colors, torn sheets, transparent sheets, cotton threads or other inserts.
- 1951 The series of Arrhythmic Machines begins, in which the case is introduced thanks to the use of worn spring mechanisms. Personal exhibition of Objects Found in the Galleria dell’Annunciata in Milan, where he exhibited the collage Brandelli of posters found in Rue Monsieur le Prince, in Paris, on a wooden fence, a little discolored by rain.
- 1953 First public screening of the Direct Projections in Milan at Studio B24. Start using the Polaroid filter to create Polarized Light Projections.
- 1954 Wins his first Golden Compass for the Zizì Monkey, a deformable toy in armed foam.
- 1955 He exhibited in the solo show Two Graphic Designers with Alvin Lustig at the MoMA in New York, where he presented his Illegible Books and Direct Projections.
- 1956 Begins to compose the series of works Theoretical Reconstruction of an Imaginary Object based on Fragments of Residues of Uncertain Origin and Unknown Use, begun in Panarea in 1955 with the invention of an Imaginary Museum of the Aeolian Islands. First public screening of Polarized Projections in Milan at Studio B24.
- 1958 Creates the Talking Forks and exhibits the Travel Sculptures – portable and folding sculptures in colored cardboard – at the Montenapoleone Gallery in Milan.
- 1959 He began producing the Fossil series of works of 2000, compositions in which he used industrial technological residues immersed in perspex. Presents the “Multiple” Continuous Structures in Paris for the M.A.T. Editions, produced by Daniel Spoerri.
- 1961 Exhibits in collective exhibitions of kinetic art curated by Pontus Hulten at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek.
- 1962 Organizes the Arte Programmata exhibition at the Olivetti store in Milan.
- 1964 Munari is the first artist to experiment with the creative use of Xerox photocopiers, producing unique works of art called Original Xerographs thanks to the movement of images during the photocopy process.
- 1965 Munari designs a fountain with 5 drops of water in Tokyo. Produces in limited edition the kinetic work Tetracono.
- 1966 Participates in the Venice Biennale. Personal exhibition at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York.
- 1967 Holds a series of lectures on visual communication at Harvard University, Cambridge (USA). Publish the Illegible Book No. Y. for the MoMA in New York.
- 1968 Produces the ‘multiple’ Flexy for the Danish company in Milan.
- 1969 Participates in the event Urban Camp in Como with the performance Far faring the Air and with polarized projections on moving screens.
- 1973 Personal exhibition of illegible writings at the Sincron Gallery in Brescia.
- 1974 Presents the series of works Colori nel Curva by Peano, inspired by the work of the famous Italian mathematician, at the Galleria Sincron in Brescia. Coordinates the graphic team that designs the new Lombardy Region logo.
- 1980 Personal exhibition Oil on Canvas at the Sincron Gallery in Brescia.
- 1981 Creates aerial structures called Filippesi made with aluminum tubes and cotton threads at the Sincron Gallery in Brescia.
- 1986 Personal room at the Venice Biennale with the series of works Olio su Tela. Anthological exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Exhibition of Projects and Objects at the UXA Studio in Novara curated by Miroslava Hàjek.
- 1988 Anthological exhibition at the Jerusalem Museum and at the University of Genoa, where in Munari the Honoris Causa Degree in Architecture is conferred.
- 1990 For the Sincron Gallery in Brescia he produced the series of works entitled High Tension, sculptures connected to the Tensile structures produced in the 1930s.
- 1994 Anthological exhibition Bruno Munari. Unexplored areas. Works 1933-1994 at the UXA Studio in Novara curated by Miroslava Hàjek. Presents the series of trees Trees at the Corraini Gallery in Mantua.
- 1995 Solo exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich.
- 1997 Exhibition of “original xerographies” entitled Portraits and Self-portraits of friends and collectors at the Sincron Gallery in Brescia. Personal exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art in Klenova (Czech Republic) curated by Miroslava Hàjek ..
Bruno Munari died in Milan on September 30th 1998.