After yesterday's post a friend wrote me asking if I had further information on Munari and his work for Italian magazines, plus some images of the artworks featured in the recently launched Olivetti exhibition in Venice, a sort of new version of the event Munari curated in 1962. So let's look at both these topics in this brief Munari round-up.
1. Munari and Italian magazines. During the 1920s and ‘30s Munari acted as a consultant or art director for important magazines as L’Ala d’Italia, La rivista illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, Natura, La lettura, L’almanacco letterario Bompiani, Tempo and Domus, and for the publicity projects of companies such as Campari, Snia Viscosa, Pirelli, Olivetti and Agip. Some of these magazines recently reappeared in an installation by academic and architect Steve Parnell, organised during the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale.
Parnell employed magazines to show their influence on architects, interpreting them as social and cultural "common ground" (the 2012 Biennale theme) for architecture.
For his installation, entitled "Playgrounds and Battegrounds", Parnell mainly focused on four magazines - Domus, Casabella, Architectural Review and Architectural Design - that are still published nowadays and that bound together different groups of people during key periods of architectural history.
To make the installation more lively and interesting for the visitors, the original magazines were gathered on display tables so that visitors can read them or leaf through them discovering in this way by themselves how the magazines were one of the key media through which architectural ideas and disciplinary networks were and are propagated.
As highlighted in this post Munari worked as Creative Director for Domus (1943-44), directed from 1928 to 1941 and from 1948 to 1976 by Italian architect and designer Gio Ponti.
2. Munari and Olivetti. Commissioned in 1957 by Adriano Olivetti and designed by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, the Venice-based Olivetti shop currently hosts the exhibition "Programmare l’arte. Olivetti e le Neoavanguardie cinetiche" (Programming Art. Olivetti and the Cinetic Neo-vanguards; until 14th October 2012), a revisitation of the 1962 Munari-curated event held at the same shop.
As stated in the previous post about the event, there are quite a few inspiring pieces from the original exhibition on display at the moment. In the shop windows you will find two artworks.
One is "Superficie Magnetica" (Magnetic Surface) by Davide Boriani (apologies for the quality of the image, but the glass produced tricky reflections...). The piece incorporates a sort of engine that allows the magnets atn back of the artwork to move; as a consequence the iron powder trapped in the glass moves constantly (you can watch it moving in the following video showing the 1962 exhibition in Milan - check out the video around 03:02).
The second work in the shop window is "Bispazio Instabile" (Unstable Bi-space) by Ennio Chiggio, inspired by mutability, optical and dynamic principles.
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That is amazing art and good to store a huge number of your books and reading stuffs.
Posted by: IB Schools in Mumbai | September 18, 2012 at 11:32 AM
I appreciating your article Architecture Magazines and Kinetic Art. Such a nice information at here in this article. Keep sharing your knowledge with us. I am thankful to you for this information. I saw amazing art and skills in this article. Go a head in future in this field...
IB Schools in Mumbai
Posted by: cerrolinacole | September 25, 2012 at 01:37 PM