Piero Fornasetti

Piero Fornasetti (Milan, 10 November 1913 – Milan, 15 October 1988) was an Italian artist and designer.

Born in Milan into a middle-class family, Fornasetti's creative pursuits encompassed design, decoration, painting, curating, and printing.

His oeuvre, spanning over 13,000 works, displayed a wide range of objects and furniture with a unique emphasis on decorative diversity.

Collaborating with figures like Gio Ponti, Fornasetti's atelier became synonymous with bringing art into everyday lives through practical yet artistically adorned objects.

Fornasetti's artistic philosophy emphasized the production of series over one-of-a-kind pieces, reflecting his commitment to democratizing art.

A central motif in his work was the "variations," notably exemplified in the iconic "Tema e Variazioni" series featuring over 400 renditions of opera singer Lina Cavalieri's face.

His creative genius extended across different mediums, from furniture to paintings, demonstrating a coherent stylistic code.

Although Fornasetti faced challenges adapting to evolving design trends in the '60s and '70s, his legacy was eventually rediscovered and celebrated through exhibitions and publications.

His fusion of classicism, surrealism, and metaphysical art, combined with his commitment to drawing as an innovative tool, cemented his influence on design and decoration.

Piero Fornasetti's enduring impact continues through the work of his son Barnaba and admirers worldwide.

Piero Fornasetti was born in 1913 into a well-off middle-class family in Milan.

A multifaceted figure in the Italian art scene of the twentieth century, Fornasetti was active as a designer, decorator, painter, curator and printer.

His works - produced in series but in limited numbers – characterise his eclecticism within the Italian culture of design.

In 1932 he enrolled at the Brera Academy but was expelled two years later for insubordination.

He then moved on to the Higher School of Applied Arts in Industry at the Castello Sforzesco, also in Milan, where he completed his schooling.

In the early Thirties, Piero began a phase of studying engraving and printing techniques.

This constant practice allowed him to work with various artists of the time, printing artist's books and lithographs for them.

From Alberto Savinio to Fabrizio Clerici, by way of Giorgio de Chirico, Massimo Campigli, Lucio Fontana, Michele Cascella, Eugene Berman, Raffaele Carrieri and Carlo Bo: the Fornasetti Art Printshop became a benchmark for many artists of his generation.

In the 1940s in Milan Fornasetti founded the design and decorative arts atelier that bears his name, Fornasetti, which, under the artistic direction of his son Barnaba Fornasetti, has become known throughout the world.

One decisive factor in starting this activity was meeting Gio Ponti, who pushed him to develop his intuition: to produce everyday objects enriched by the kind of decoration that would bring art into ordinary people's homes.

This was the origin of the Fornasetti atelier, an example of the principle of "practical madness", where creativity is in perfect harmony with the utility of the object.

Then as now, porcelain items, furniture and furnishing accessories represented the heart of Fornasetti's production.

The choice to work with everyday objects is not accidental.

Fornasetti constantly sought reproducibility in series in his works, explaining this choice in terms of democratic and technical principles.

"It has always been my notion not to make one-off pieces, but series of items."

Even in this climate of seriality, the theme of "variations" is central to the artist's activity, reaching its greatest importance in the Tema e Variazioni series.

These are the works inspired by the face of Lina Cavalieri, Piero Fornasetti's long-term muse.

To date there are over four hundred variations, extended and expanded by the work of the Fornasetti atelier.

Fornasetti's work straddles different media, from furniture to paintings by way of tapestries and fashion, applied to a diverse variety of surfaces but maintaining a particularly coherent stylistic code.

This eclecticism gained admirers of equally diverse origins: Pablo Neruda defined him as "a magician of precious and precise magic", while Bruno Munari affirmed that "Fornasetti can only be measured by the yardstick of Fornasetti", affectionately seeking to underline his artistic uniqueness.

Piero Fornasetti spent his childhood in the apartment building built by his father Pietro, in the Città Studi district, where at the time the city ended and the fields began.

The first child in a wealthy bourgeois family, he found himself facing a seemingly predetermined future: his father, an entrepreneur, had decided that Piero would follow in his footsteps, taking on the family business.

Contrary to family expectations, Piero displayed an innate artistic inclination.

Of this period he would say:

"I will never forget the thrill when, as a boy, one summer morning on the lake, for the first time my pen began to trace the outline of a leg, then a body, then a face. I was astonished, ecstatic and in awe of this miracle, and am still always amazed every time at this blossoming of the image I have inside me, emerging all by itself from the page..."

Together with his penchant for drawing, Fornasetti also soon revealed his tough, determined character, demonstrating his resolve to pursue his aspiration.

"He was the first to print De Chirico lithographs in Milan, some considerable time ago", wrote Raffaele Carrieri in Epoca in 1978.

During his artistic career, he created over 13,000 works, including a vast production of 20th century objects and furniture, especially in terms of diversity of decorations.

Art critic and collector Patrick Mauriès said:

"'It's rare to see such happiness in the act of making and producing, such a sweeping vision, free of any shadow of conflict in the moment of creation: a serene epiphany, an outpouring of inventions.'"