Bruno Munari.My Futurist Past
19 Sep 2012 – 23 Dec 2012
18 Sep 2012 press preview
Curated by
Miroslava Hajek
in collaboration with Luca Zaffarano
Production
Massimo & Sonia Cirulli Archive NY
Estorick Collection London
Contributions
Pierpaolo Antonello (Cambridge UK)
Jeffrey Schnapp (Harvard USA)
Bruno Munari (Milan 1908 – 1998) grows up as an artist in the Second Futurism which influences him.
In 1925 he knows Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Enrico Prampolini.
From 1927 onwards he participates to Futurist group exhibitions at the Galleria Pesaro (Milan), at the Venice Biennial and at the Rome and Paris Quadriennial exhibitions.
In 1930 he starts to create his first Aerial Machines then called Useless Machines, conceived as abstract, three-dimensional, mobile paintings in space that anticipate his idea of environmental art.
In 1946 exploring the issue of a work that interacts with the surrounding space, he probably makes the first installation in art history, Concave-Convex: a metallic net hung on the ceiling of a squared room illuminated by puntiform sources which projects a shadow on the walls through a spontaneous movement.
From shadow he comes to conceive light installation: Direct Projections (1950) and then Polarized Light Projections (1953).
