Piero Fornasetti. One Hundred Years of Practical Madness

Painter, engraver and printer, designer, collector, stylist, refined craftsman, art gallery manager and exhibition promoter, Piero Fornasetti was an extremely rich and complex personality. He designed and made approximately 13,000 objects and decorations. His world is animated by the rigour of project, of art and craftsmanship, but also by unbridled fantasy, surrealist invention and poetry.

On the occasion of the centenary of Piero Fornasetti’s birth, the book Piero Fornasetti. One hundred years of practical madness, curated by Barnaba Fornasetti, chooses to pay tribute to Fornasetti to underscore the artist’s role and propose a new and more correct reading of his work in the context of the critical and theoretical debate on ornament as a structural element of project.

The book accompanies the exhibition of the Triennale Design Museum, curated by Barnaba Fornasetti, the first grand and unprecedented exhibition in Italy of the artist’s work.