ART & DESIGN

An important monograph on the designer Fornasetti, published to coincide with the 1992 exhibition Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The book examines Fornasetti’s life and work and explores his use of witty surface decoration and trompe l’oeil to create furniture, objects and spaces that are instantly recognisable today. His designs are well illustrated and sit alongside texts by Patrick Mauries and Ettore Sottsass, and an interview given by Fornasetti in 1987.

Piero Fornasetti lived and worked in Milan from 1935 until his death in 1988. During this long career he established an enduring reputation as a designer with a style that was distinctly his own–a style based on illusion, architectural perspectives, and a host of personal leitmotifs, such as the sun, playing cards, fish, and flowers, from which he spun seemingly endless variations.

Fornasetti applied his decorative vocabulary to an astonishing array of objects–hats, vests, pipes, ashtrays, chairs, plates, cabinets, pianos, ocean liners–and transformed them by the application of unexpected images.

Today his work seems more contemporary and is more popular than ever. Designers and collectors celebrate his use of allusion, unsettling images, and striking juxtaposition to create unique, whimsical objects. Fornasetti’s masterpieces continue to shock, delight, and inspire.

pp. 285, over 600 illusts – 116 in colour A TRULY BEAUTIFUL BOOK ! 

#101223 (Large, heavy book.)