Bruno Munari spent seven decades treating the line between art and design as something to walk across rather than defend. He hung abstract shapes from threads and called them useless machines, made books with no words, set a single brand name in dozens of typefaces for a moving audience, and designed a hanging lamp that packs flat into a small box. For designers today, his value is less a style than a habit of mind: define a constraint, then explore every honest variation inside it.
His work is in copyright. The three Bruno Munari objects in the Met’s online collection are not flagged public domain, and the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art list no works by him, so this guide describes the pieces in text and names the collections that hold them. For public domain images you can reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Bruno Munari?
The Met records him as Italian, born in Milan in 1907 and died in Milan in 1998; the Centre Pompidou gives the same years. He came to art through the second wave of Futurism in Milan from the late 1920s, the movement led by F. T. Marinetti that also shaped the commercial graphics of Fortunato Depero. After the Second World War he moved toward abstraction: in 1948, the Munari archive records, he co-founded the Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC) in Milan with Gillo Dorfles, Atanasio Soldati and Gianni Monnet, a group interested in art built from colour, form and space rather than from depicted subjects. The Met holds an Arte concreta item dated 1950–51 under his name.
From the 1950s his output split into many channels at once: objects for the Milan firm Danese, toys, children’s books, graphic design, theoretical books and, later, workshops that taught children to learn by doing.
Key works, from mobile to lamp
Useless machines (from the 1930s). The Macchine inutili are hanging constructions of light materials whose flat geometric shapes turn in moving air. Dates vary between sources: some accounts place the idea around 1930 and the named series around 1933, while the Centre Pompidou holds a Macchina inutile dated 1949, showing that he kept returning to the format. The title is a joke with a point: machines were meant to be useful, art was not, and Munari swapped the two.
Unreadable books (from 1949). The Libri illeggibili are books without text, made of coloured and cut paper so that the page edge, the hole and the turn of the sheet carry the “story”. Scholarly accounts date the series to 1949, when examples were shown at the Libreria Salto in Milan, and note that he kept making new versions for decades. A later set, I prelibri, twelve small books for very young children, was published by Danese in 1980.
Zizì (designed 1952). A small monkey toy of foam rubber over a bendable wire skeleton, made by the Pirelli-group firm Pigomma. The ADI Design Museum in Milan and the Fondazione Pirelli both record that Zizì won the Compasso d’Oro in 1954.
Cubo ashtray (1957) and Maldive tray (1960). MoMA dates the Cubo, a closed box in melamine resin and anodised aluminium made by Danese, to 1957. The Met holds the Maldive tray in nickel silver, dated 1960, and a silver-plated brass ashtray from after the war, both given by Jacqueline and Bruno Danese.
Campari poster (1964). Declinazione grafica del nome Campari repeats the brand name in many typefaces and sizes across one sheet. Campari’s own archive and the Galleria Campari tie it to the opening of Milan’s M1 metro line in 1964, and Campari describes the work as something designed to be seen in movement.
Falkland lamp (1964). A tube of stretch knit held open by metal rings of different sizes, hung from the ceiling. MoMA dates its example to 1964 with Danese as manufacturer, and the Museo Omero in Ancona, which also holds one, records it as produced by Danese since 1964.
Abitacolo. A piece of children’s furniture that Domus and the design-culture site Be Culture both record as winning the Compasso d’Oro in 1979; Be Culture adds that he received a further Compasso d’Oro for his career in 1994.
What to look at in a Bruno Munari design
Composition as a system, not a picture. Munari rarely composed one fixed image. The Campari poster is a field of variations on a seven-letter word; the useless machines change composition every time the air moves; the unreadable books rearrange themselves as you turn the pages. Look for the rule underneath, then notice how many outcomes it allows.
Flat colour and figure–ground. In his concrete-art period Munari explored what he called negative-positive compositions, where neither shape nor background wins. Sources date the series variously from the mid-1940s to 1951. The lesson for a logo or icon set is to design the space between shapes as carefully as the shapes themselves.
Lettering as texture. In the Campari poster the letters are the image. Changing the typeface, weight and scale while keeping one word turns type into pattern. For more on letters as image, see our lettering collection.
Light and shadow as material. The useless machines cast moving shadows that become part of the work, and in the early 1950s he showed “direct projections”, small slides of coloured and found materials projected onto walls. The Munari archive dates their public showing in Milan to 1953.
The page as an object. His books use die-cuts, translucent sheets and different paper stocks so that the physical book does the storytelling. Nella notte buia (1956), published by Muggiani, moves from dark paper through tracing paper to cut pages; a Domus note of the same year called it more of a game and a paper theatre than a book. See our book design collection for older examples of the page as a designed space.
Technique and method
Munari wrote about method as much as he practised it. Arte come mestiere (Laterza, 1966) appeared in English as Design as Art (Penguin, 1971), translated by Patrick Creagh; the original was illustrated with the author’s own photographs and drawings. Da cosa nasce cosa (Laterza, 1981), whose title translates roughly as “one thing leads to another”, returns to the question of how a design project develops.
In practice his technique was modest. He used cheap or industrial materials (foam rubber, melamine, knit fabric, card and thread) and made the method of making visible. The Falkland lamp is a sleeve and some rings; the Cubo is a box and a fold of metal. Children’s work followed the same logic. In 1977 he ran a workshop for children at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, later known as Giocare con l’arte (Playing with Art), where children tried techniques rather than copying artworks.
How designers can borrow Bruno Munari’s ideas today
- Write the rule first. Before sketching, state the constraint in one sentence (“one word, many typefaces”; “one sleeve, three rings”). Then generate variations inside it and pick the strongest.
- Design for motion. The Campari poster was planned for passengers passing by. For screens, signage and social formats, test how a layout reads at a glance, in a crop and in motion.
- Treat figure and ground equally. Build icons and patterns so that the negative space forms shapes too; check them inverted.
- Let the material speak. Packaging and print can carry meaning through die-cuts, translucency and paper weight rather than through more ink.
- Use a small palette of flat colours. Munari’s mobiles and books rely on a few clear colours against white or black. Build a five-colour set with our colour palette generator and test it on both backgrounds.
- Prototype in cheap materials. Card, string and tape can tell you more about a mobile, a fold or a pack than a render can.
- Design for the youngest user. Children’s books and toys force clarity. If a child can use it, an adult usually can too.
Where to see Bruno Munari’s work
The Met holds the Maldive tray, a post-war ashtray and an Arte concreta item. MoMA holds the Falkland lamp, the Cubo ashtray and examples of the unreadable books. The Centre Pompidou holds a Macchina inutile of 1949, and the ADI Design Museum in Milan shows Zizì among Compasso d’Oro winners. The Museo del Novecento in Milan has staged a show on the useless machines. All of these works remain in copyright; museum and publisher pages show images for study only.
Frequently asked questions
What is Bruno Munari known for?
He is known for crossing art and design: the useless machines, the wordless unreadable books, children’s picture books such as Nella notte buia, objects for Danese such as the Falkland lamp and Cubo ashtray, the 1964 Campari poster and his book Design as Art.
Was Bruno Munari a Futurist?
He began in the circle of second-wave Futurism in Milan from the late 1920s, later moved to abstraction, co-founding the Movimento Arte Concreta in 1948.
Are Bruno Munari’s works public domain?
No. He died in 1998, and the museum records checked for this guide do not flag any of his works as public domain. Discuss and study the work, but do not reproduce it without permission.
Which Bruno Munari book should a designer read?
Design as Art (Penguin, 1971; Italian original Arte come mestiere, 1966) is the only one of his theoretical books translated into English, according to its publishers’ listings, and it is the natural place to start.
