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Jan.23,2005 -Jan.30,2005 |
The true fictional surrealist
Italian artist Piero Fornasetti remembered in exhibition at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura
By Jennifer Febbraro
Originally Published: 2004-03-07
Piero Fornasetti was quoted as saying, "design is what the Italians do naturally, spontaneously. It is restraint, harmony, and balance. Not to exaggerate or overdo. To be careful and rigorous."
I wish I could ascribe such virtues to all of my father's side of the family! I'm not quite sure that Leonardo Da Vinci's reproduction of the Last Supper hanging suspiciously in the kitchens of every zia's house counts for "good taste". But anyhow, maybe Fornasetti was making a larger point. He lends credence to his inheritance injecting all participants or fellow-Italians, with a kind of optimism. It stems from the certain knowledge that the artistic traditions long in their evolution in the cathedrals, museums, and ceilings of Italy could mutate into something contemporary - the chair for example, or the simple drinking glass.
This month at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura the works of the late Piero Fornasetti will be on display - a sampling of everything from sculpture, drawing, and even paintings.
Piero Fornasetti spent most of his life in Milan from 1935, when he was only 22, until his death in 1988. Fornasetti became an infamous character within the Italian art scene and relished in the multiple influences his work absorbed. Imagery inspired by architecture, illusionism and magic, and his own personal iconography of obsessive signs - such as the sun, fish, playing cards, and flowers - wove their way down the umbilical cord of creativity and into the mundane, functional, everyday objects which he infused with his own style.
Take, for example, the furniture he developed in tandem with Gio Ponti, a fellow Italian architect and founder of Domus, an Italian magazine. Ponti and Fornasetti collaborated together - Ponti made the objects and Fornasetti decorated them - thus recreating the interiors of all who could afford the expensive duo. Ponti's uniquely delicate chair became wrapped in a newsprint kind of wallpaper, as Fornasetti played origamically with print, revealing the geometric beauty of letters inherent in their shape.
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