Piero Fornasetti: Uncommon, Unexpected

We're often told to look for the beauty everywhere around us, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary but, well, sometimes we all need a little help. And when we can't find the wonder in the solely functional, we need an artist who can put it there-an artist like Piero Fornasetti.

Born in Milan on November 10, 1913, Piero Fornasetti knew early on that he wanted to be an artist. At 17, he began studies at Milan's Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. Two years later, in 1932, he was expelled for "insubordination," engendered, no doubt, by his claim that they were not teaching what he truly wanted to learn: drawing from life. He went on to Milano University, where he exhibited his first work, printed silk scarves, in 1933 at the Milan Triennale.

Fornasetti found his artistic calling working in different media to create functional décor items. Always fascinated by time, he designed a Calendar book for his friend, Gio Ponti. He was commissioned to be the interior decorator for the San Remo Casino, and the first class sections of the ocean liner Andrea Doria. Never one to be limited to canvas, paper, or stone, he used wood, silk, ceramics, and engraving to create unique-and uniquely beautiful-screens, plates, furniture, blinds, wallpaper and accessories. He often used one form of art to create another; for example, architectural columns, repeated, became the motif for a set of blinds. Perhaps the most famous instance of this, however, is his use of a 19th century newspaper engraving for 350 or more decoupage plates.

"Themes and Variations," as the series is called, depicts one face-that of soprano, actress, and renowned beauty Lina Cavalieri-in a series of scenes and poses. Although Cavalieri was one of the most photographed women of her time, Fornasetti used a commonplace engraved illustration, repeating its classical features hundreds of times: in candlelight; as part of a hot air balloon; with a finger to her lips; in a Daliesque scene; winking; or shattered. These plates-as au courant now as the day they were created, captured the public's imagination and later, in the London design store, also known as Themes and Variations, brought the aging artist back into the limelight.

After his father's death in 1988, Barnaba Fornasetti continues to create replicas of these plates, along with other decorative arts, in the same manner in which his father worked, almost a century ago. It is a mark of Fornasetti's artistic vision that his pieces do not seem dated. He once said "I refuse to establish the value of things based on time," and his work is, above all, timeless.