Week 2 – Ways of Communicating

Design As Art Review (And a very abridged review of modernism)


Bruno Munari (1907 – 1998)

Italian artist and graphic designer frequently credited with establishing visual arts foundations and the relationships between functionality and aesthetics.


These sculptures were built with light material and meant to explore space without being realistic.

During WWII was involved with Futurism and started working as an art director and graphic designer. Disagreed with the politics and moved on later.

“In addition to being responsible for the magazine's graphics, Munari was also the author of articles addressing issues relating to the aesthetic problems of reconstruction or issues projected, in any case, beyond the end of war” (Domus)

Later founded Movimento Arte Concreta, Italian concrete art movement (1948 – 1950)

“Concrete Art” is a bucket term regarding various abstract art movements of the 20th century. The term was coined by Theo van Doesburg in his 1930 Manifesto of Concrete Art. Here are some earlier movements


Concrete art refers to “concrete” forms – shape, color, material in a physical format. In concrete art, the idea of abstraction is pushed to the extreme by referencing objects and ideas that come directly from the mind. It’s related to other abstract art movements happening around the same time, such as De Stijl (Style in Dutch)

De Stijl

Key artists: Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszar, Bart van der Leck, Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van ‘t Hoff

“We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a surface – Theo van Doesburg (Source)

What was going on around this time in the world?




Why did these artists refer to this as a new universal style?







Similar movements


Blast (1914)