The imaginative universe of Piero Fornasetti, an iconic figure of Italy’s economic boom, and the creative continuity of his son Barnaba.

Piero Fornasetti started his business in the immediate postwar period, when in 1947 — encouraged by Gio Ponti, who first sensed his talent — he presented ceramics at the eighth Milan Triennale. In the early 1950s, together with Ponti, he created the furnishings for the great Italian transatlantic liners, a fruitful collaboration that would give him great visibility. Piero Fornasetti quickly expanded production with furniture, furnishings and accessories, household objects, and fabrics, becoming an iconic designer in Italy as the country was reborn, rebuilt, and transformed after the war in the years of the economic boom. Some of Fornasetti’s furniture — the trumeau, the desk, the chest of drawers — have fully entered the history of twentieth-century Italian design.

After Piero’s death in 1988, his son Barnaba took the reins of the company, enhancing his father’s incredible visual archive, relaunching the brand, and ferrying it toward international development of great prestige, with exhibitions and activities in museums around the world.

Fornasetti is a brand that is now known all over the world and is sought-after by international collectors. The imaginative universe that Fornasetti builds around its ironic objects and outside any conventions is unique and unparalleled.

This book, made in close collaboration with Barnaba Fornasetti, who has penned the foreword, traces the story of this exciting human and creative adventure.

About the Author:

Barnaba Fornasetti has been running the company founded by his father since 1988. Museums that have hosted his exhibitions include Triennale, Milan; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; and Dongdaemun Museum, Seoul. In 2017 he was awarded the MAD Visionaries! Award.

This elaborate volume, authored by the designer’s son, is a splendid celebration of one of the world’s most inventive design minds. Combining whimsy and elegance, Piero Fornasetti (1913 –1988) transformed everyday objects like cups, scarves, and screens into works of art featuring his idiosyncratic leitmotifs, such as the hand, the female face, and luminescent fish. Additionally, he created a wide range of works, including idealized architectural fantasy drawings, book designs, and provocative nudes, as well as the decor for the luxury liner Andrea Doria. Perhaps most famous for dazzling pieces of trompe l’oeil furniture, Fornasetti was rediscovered in the 1980s and has remained much sought-after by collectors worldwide. Featuring 2,800 illustrations, many never before published, the monograph is designed to be an artist’s book that reflects as faithfully as possible Fornasetti’s own approach to design. Fornasetti’s work is organized by type and includes paintings, sculptures and etchings, furniture, graphics, textiles, glass, screens, trays, and ceramics, as well as smaller categories. With unique and exhaustive access to the archives, this epic undertaking covers detailed technical, biographical, and bibliographical information, including a list of exhibitions and a register of the complete works. A must-have for collectors and connoisseurs alike.

For fans, collectors and dealers Rizzoli's upcoming book Fornasetti: The Complete Universe is cause for massive celebration. Nearly 700 pages long, with 3,000 images and illustrations, it is a composite catalogue raisonne and coffee table book extraordinaire. For those ever frustrated with the paucity of information on Fornasetti, the book feels like a miracle.

I like to equate Fornasetti with Andy Warhol. Both had long, prolific careers that constantly replenished their output with material that was simultaneously fresh but iconic. Both were talented illustrators and masters of appropriation. Fornasetti is remarkable in the realms of both art and design in his enthusiastic embrace of figuration, antiquity and the ornate defying not only his generations aesthetic preferences but many trends inherent in Modernism.

Unlike Warhol, whose works are mostly priced in the million-dollar range, objects by Fornasetti remain accessible to a large segment of the population. Of course, there are Fornasetti pieces (notably 1950’s furniture emblazoned with his most iconic motifs) with price tags that approach six figures. However, there is also a significant amount of material available on the secondary market today that was made by the Fornasetti atelier during his lifetime. (Full disclosure: I am a dealer who specializes in vintage Fornasetti) Such pieces, including everything from silk scarves, lamps, umbrella stands, ashtrays, mirrors and decorated porcelain can be found in the several hundred to several thousand dollar range. Fornasetti: The Complete Universe is such an astounding book as for the first time there is an attempt to document and date everything (?!) that Piero created during his lifetime. Fornasetti has numerous motifs or subjects that he applied to an array of consumer goods that are uniquely his own notably malachite, mythology, playing cards, the personification of the sun and moon, musical instruments and “Themes & Variations” (which puts a woman’s face in over 300 surrealist scenarios).

The book is composed of two halves; one dedicated to his artistic ambitions and evolution, the second how his talents were applied to creating a host of elaborate and distinctive consumer products. Fornasetti’s son, Barnaba is largely responsible for both maintaining his father’s archives, the creation of this book and the enduring popularity of Fornasetti. Since his father’s death in 1988, Barnaba has actively reissued designs and licensed certain iconic images. Some purists may find it problematic that such post-humous work is included here. After all such pieces were not created nor overseen by the creator and will likely never appreciate in value.

About the Authors:

Barnaba Fornasetti is a designer and oversees his father’s legacy. Andrea Branzi is a leading architect and designer in Milan and has published a number of books on design, including The Hot House: Italian New Wave Design. Mariuccia Casadio is the art consultant for Italian Vogue and the author of Dolce & Gabbana: Fashion Album, among other books.

Piero Fornasetti was a master of the decorative imagination. He employed illusionism, architectural perspectives and a host of personal leitmotifs - the sun, playing cards, still lifes, libraries, harlequins, newspapers, the face of a once-famous opera singer - in seemingly endless variations on plates, chairs, desks, screens, scarves, cabinets and decorative objects of every kind. As Gio Ponti, his friend and collaborator, said: 'he makes objects speak.'

Fornasetti's oeuvre is celebrated here in a publication that marks him out as a virtuoso conjurer of dream and illusion. Captured in paintings, drawings and photographs from the family and studio archives, Fornasetti's designs testify to a unique imaginative genius.

A celebration of the enormously popular Italian painter, sculptor and interior decorator

Piero Fornasetti established an enduring reputation as a designer with a style that was all his own – a style based on illusionism, architectural perspectives and a host of personal leitmotifs, such as the sun, playing cards and fishes, from which he spun seemingly endless variations. 'He makes objects speak' said Gio Ponti, his friend and longtime collaborator.

Designers and collectors today celebrate his use of allusion, unsettling images and striking juxtaposition to create unique, whimsical objects. Fornasetti's masterpieces shock, delight and inspire.