California Italian Studies

Starting from Umberto Eco’s suggestion that sees Bruno Munari as a “personaggio calviniano,” this essay discusses Calvino’s Six Memos as a way to map Munari’s work and the theoretical intentions expressed in his books. This is not an arbitrary choice, for it is based on the belief that in his extraordinarily diverse and multidisciplinary work and experimentation with–among other media, genres, practices and artforms–painting, sculpture, illustration, graphic and industrial design, advertising, publishing, architecture, performance, experimental cinema, creative and essayistic writing, and art pedagogy, Munari embodies the six virtues extolled by Calvino like no other artist in the Italian 20^th century. Like Calvino’s, Munari’s lessons may in fact be seen to constitute, in their own original way, an invaluable template for this millennium that is as of yet unrecognized outside the field of design.