From March 16 to June 30, 2024, the “Villa dei Capolavori” in Mamiano di Traversetolo hosts one of the most comprehensive exhibitions ever dedicated to Bruno Munari (1907-1998). A multifaceted figure, Munari redefined the boundaries between art, design, and pedagogy. Appropriately titled “Tutto” (Everything), the exhibition offers a cross-sectional look at seventy years of ideas and inventions, revealing the enduring relevance of an artist who viewed the world with the wonder of a child and the precision of an engineer.
Curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Stefano Roffi, the showcase features over 250 works spanning Munari’s entire creative journey: from his debut in Second Futurism to the famous “Useless Machines,” through to his graphic experiments and revolutionary workshops for children. Rather than following a rigid chronological order, the exhibition layout is organized by “aptitudes,” highlighting the constant connections between seemingly distant fields such as advertising, industrial design, and pure artistic research.
Highlights of the exhibition include the iconic “Talking Forks,” the “Unreadable Books,” and the Abitacolo—a modular living space for teenagers that earned him the Compasso d’Oro in 1979. The goal of Fondazione Magnani-Rocca is to capture the complexity of a “method” rooted in curiosity and the study of formal rules, only to dismantle them with irony and lightness.