Bruno Munari

I knew from the very beginning that one of my first posts on this blog would have to be about Bruno Munari and his fabulous books and book covers. So this feels like a good place to start.

Munari was an Italian artist, designer, and one of the great makers of books for children. He worked across painting, sculpture, industrial design, graphic design and education — but it is his picture books, made over the course of more than half a century, that I keep returning to. His first book for children was published originally in 1942, in English as Munari’s Machines, and it is just as funny and inventive now as it must have been then.

In 1963 he made A Munari Kind of Zoo. Inside you meet all sorts of strange creatures: birds with hats, a zebra in striped pyjamas, a camel who is generously offering you a seat. The drawings are spare and confident; the jokes are perfectly pitched for a small audience. Most of the books are still kept in print by the wonderful publisher Corraini Editore in Mantova, in both English and Italian editions.

Other titles I love include The Circus in the Mist (with its semi-transparent overlays), Romilda the Frog, Never Content, and Drawing the Sun. Each one teaches the child reader something about how to look — how a fold in the paper can become an event, how white space can become weather, how a single line can suggest a whole figure.

There is also a beautiful little film made by Giovanni Belgrano and Munari called Più e meno. The music alone is worth a few minutes of your day.

If you do not yet own a Munari, I envy you the discovery.