Image 1 of 3
Image 2 of 3
Image 3 of 3
CLETO MUNARI
Cleto Munari: The Alchemist of Forms - Creator and Editor
Cleto Munari (Italy, born 1930). A singular figure in contemporary design, Cleto Munari has established himself as one of those rare creators capable of transforming imagination into iconic objects. More than a designer, he is a catalyst: a free spirit who crosses disciplines, brings talents together, and gives life to works where boldness, irony, and poetry meet. His talent lies not only in his ability to conceive objects, but in his gift for creating dialogues - dialogues between materials, between tradition and experimentation, and above all, between creators.
Munari built his universe through collaborations with some of the most influential artists and architects of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Among them, Ettore Sottsass holds a central place. Their intellectual and aesthetic rapport, born in the 1970s, produced objects that have become emblematic. Sottsass - with his radical, geometric, and vibrant language - found in Munari a passionate interpreter. Together, they demonstrated that an object can transcend its function and become a visual and emotional experience, almost a narrative.
These successive collaborations - whether with Sottsass, Mimmo Paladino, Alessandro Mendini, Meret Oppenheim, and many others shaped the “Munari style”: a design that fully embraces its artistic dimension, claims the luxury of originality, and sees in every creation a fragment of culture.
This chapter of our catalogue pays homage to that collective spirit, to that vision in which design becomes a shared adventure. It celebrates Cleto Munari not only as a creator, but as the conductor of a plural imagination, capable of transforming a simple object into a work of contemporary art.