Dissertation

Bruno Munari and the invention of modern graphic design in Italy, 1928-1945

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) was a prolific and influential artist, designer, and writer. Alessandro Colizzi’s study is the first extensive, detailed record of Munari’s graphic design production, and as such provides a substantial base for a full understanding of his oeuvre.

Author: Alessandro Colizzi
Date: 19 May 2011
Links: Full text available in Leiden Repository

While Munari’s evolution is dealt with chronologically, the analysis of his graphic works underlines key areas of visual interest, offering a cross reading that sheds light on their underlying poetics, themes and formal attributes.

Munari’s wideranging graphic design work shows in his trajectory how modernist ideas were received and assimilated in the Milanese environment of the 1930s, as well as the transition from a conception of the profession related to avant-garde art practice to a modern conception of graphic design based on rational assumptions and idioms. It is no coincidence that Munari will be one the leading exponents of modern Italian graphic design, to emerge fully after 1945, and whose roots can be traced to this heterogeneous legacy.