Fornasetti: L'artista alchimista-La bottega fantastica

A cult designer for collectors of modern artefacts, Piero Fornasetti (Milan, 1913-1988) was a brilliant and prolific creator: his work in art, decoration, interior design and design is collected, documented and published in an extraordinarily wide-ranging catalogue, never before attempted, which gathers the immense work of a rebel mind, outside any categories. With the help of his son Barnaba Fornasetti, who is continuing his father's work using tools and methods which have survived over time, an iconographic archive has been created which is surprising for both its extent and value: more than 3000 illustrations enliven a kind of "artist's journal", with a graphic structure which reflects Fornasetti's own creativity and modus operandi. The first volume collects biographical elements and his most important artistic works: paintings, sculptures, engravings, furniture, set designs, graphic art, textile productions (scarves and fashion fabrics) and glassware. The second volume is dedicated to design and the decoration of objects - from furniture to screens, from panels to ceramics - and covers the history of the workshop from its foundation to the present day. These two volumes, published by Electa, do not constitute a 'catalogue raisonné', which would be impossible for such a prolific artist whose work crossed over into so many fields, but supply as much technical information as possible, for the use of collectors, design experts and enthusiasts. Fornasetti, as Andrea Branzi writes, "was the best Italian graphic artist of his time; a graphic artist who had an original idea of his own work as an expansive, diffusive, environmental activity, not designed to fill posters or books but to cover the surfaces of the world and, by decorating them, change their meaning".

Table of Contents

Volume I

Artist by vocation.
Works from 1927 to 1948

Vision and practice.
Scarves and textiles: art applied to fashion

Drawings and design.
Furnishing and stage sets between the 1940s and the 1970s

The cult of communication.
Graphic art for publishers, advertising, gifts and correspondence

A made to measure habitat.
The house-workshop in Milan and the villa in Varenna

Eros of language.
Discussions on sexuality and seduction

Images in the mirror.
Blown glass, mirrors and games of reflection

Artist for life.
Works from the 1970s and 1980s

Volume II

Fantasies in furnishing.
Furniture between reality and illusion

Narrative scenes.
The theatricality of screens and panels

Make-believe and function.
Objects for use and display

Tests of ingenuity.
Variations on the theme of tray

The ornate and the flexible.
The imaginary face of gifts and tableware

Detours around an icon.
The 'Theme and Variations' series

Vitality and continuity of a style.
The workshop today and its interactions with the outside world

Practical Madness.
Apparatus