serving library, bruno munari

The Serving Library Annual's 2019/20 issue is dedicated entirely to the late Italian designer, artist, inventor, and polymath Bruno Munari. The centerpiece of the annual is the first English translation of Obvious Code, a 1971 collection of Munari's own writings, sketches, and poems about his work. Published by arrangement with Corraini, who issued the book's anastatic edition in 2017, the collection includes iconic design objects like the Abitacolo, ground-breaking artworks such as his 1952 series of hand-made projection slides, and little-known rhymes about the art market, as well as an original piece from his "unreadable books" series. Additionally, dozens of artists, designers, writers, and curators have been invited to annotate Munari's texts with sketches, quotations, in-depth analysis, fragments of conversation, and free associations in the margins. This serves as a testament to the depth of Munari's influence on international art as an under-acknowledged pioneer whose visual experiments have become an obvious code and a self-evident part of visual culture.

144-page paperback, 8.25 x 11.75 inches