Piero Fornasetti

The Italian artist and designer Piero Fornasetti covered everything from furniture to fashion and ceramics with his eccentric motifs. Drawing on the visual language of the Surrealists, classical art and occultism, these illustrations spanned tromp-l’oeil musical instruments, depictions of the sun and moon and the face of the Italian opera singer Lina Cavalieri, which appeared in more than 300 variations on dinner plates. ‘I want to free my inspiration from the limitations of the usual,’ he said.

Born in Milan in 1913, Fornasetti was expelled from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera for unruly behaviour. After spending the war in Switzerland and Africa, he returned to Milan in 1946, where his graphic designs printed on silk scarves caught the attention of architect and industrial designer Gio Ponti. Despite Ponti being more than 20 years his senior, the pair embarked on a series of lifelong collaborations — Ponti often creating the form and Fornasetti adding the ornamentation. This method culminated with their Architettura series of furniture covered with illustrations of Neoclassical building facades, which launched at the 1952 Triennale di Milano.

Ponti and Fornasetti also notably worked together on decorative schemes for the interior of San Remo Casino, as well as the luxury ocean liner Andrea Doria, which was destroyed when it sank in 1956.

A result of Fornasetti’s one-man mission to turn all functional things into theatrical and humorous works of art, by the time of his death in Milan in 1988, at the age of 75, his atelier had produced over 13,000 different objects.