Piero Fornasetti was born in Milan on November 10th, 1913. He exhibited his first paintings in 1933 in his home town. His influences are diverse, first of all he quotes two books important for his formation which are the one of "Giotto" by Carlo Carrà and that of the "Piero della Francesca" by Roberto Longhi.
Of these he will pull the sense of the purge of the volumes and the space.
Another origin of the art of Fornasetti are the metaphysical concepts which were developed in the 30s ' around Savinio and around Chirico.
Two of the major subjects of the universe of Fornasetti are the neo-romanticism and the human face as we can see in his works "subjects and variations".
Among his numerous formal registers, if we except that of the face a register dominates his universe, that of the architecture and the improbable perspectives and that of the imaginary city. On this subject it's advisable to highlight the influence of the engravings of Piranèse.
The "fornasettiens" patterns which we find most frequently in his work are musical instruments, armors, vases and flowers.
Instruments of music, with their simple shape were one of the privileged subjects of "intarsiatori", technique re-used by Fornasetti.
Furthermore we count constants values in his work which are the assertion of the powers of the imagination, the taste of the dream, the visual multiplicity and a desire of order.
This desire of order joins in the fashion of the years 40-50 in Italy of the style Novecento which called the " return in the order ", in a frontality, in a hiératisme, in a clarity of the composition and in a neo-primitiveness. This fashion, keeps pace with the rediscovery of the Italian Quattrocento, Romans and with the metaphysical concepts of Carrà and Chirico.
The constituents of his Design are the use of the engraving, the taste for the printing and the lacquering, the use of primitive italians and the allusions and citations.
From the 40s ' Fornasetti was considered as one of the bosses of the decorative art, he worked for the Venini house and for Barovier. Of more Gio Ponti who was a burning defender of his work collaborated repeatedly with him.
Fornasetti executed very few unique pieces because he considered that the beauty must not be exclusively reserved for the circle of introduced but might be democratized.
He realized 57 models of 200 cm * 200 cm folding screens and 28 models of 130 * 140 cms.
Piero Fornasetti died in Milan on October 15th 1988.
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