THE FORMING OF FORNASETTI
Piero Fornasetti was born in Milan in 1913 and, from an early age, he started to draw. Much to his accountant father’s displeasure, he yearned to be an artist and enrolled at Milan’s Brera Academy in 1930 to study drawing. He was expelled for insubordination in 1932 and instead taught himself lithography and etching. He spent days reading magazines and books on arts and science, and enrolled in night classes at Castello Sforzesco in Milan.
In 1933 he exhibited his rst artwork at the University of Milan and produced a series of printed silk scarves that caught the eye of architect and designer
Gio Ponti. The two men collaborated on various projects and combined Ponti’s signature
angular forms with Fornasetti’s witty and whimsical motifs.
Fornasetti’s success reached its peak in the 1950s and, during this period, the artist created his Themes & Variations series, a collection of plates featuring his muse, the n de siècle opera singer Lina Cavalieri, whose face he spotted in a magazine. He started painting her in 1952 and never stopped, creating a series of more than 350 pieces.
By the 1980s, popularity for Fornasetti’s bold pa erns had waned and the company was struggling nancially, but Liliane Fawce helped to revive the brand when she opened her Notting Hill gallery in 1984, named Themes & Variations. Fornasetti died in 1988, having produced thousands of designs. His son, Barnaba, continues the atelier today, with limitededition pieces and a range of home accessories using archive designs.
Fornasetti’s brilliant mind has inspired numerous designers over the decades, from Philippe Starck to Sue Timney.