Piero Fornasetti: 100 years of practical madness

Friday 23 August 2013



To celebrate the centenary of Piero Fornasetti’s birth, Milan's Triennale Design Museum will this autumn present the first major exhibition of the artist’s work, curated by his son Barnaba Fornasetti.


Fornasetti was a rich and complex personality, who was many things: painter, engraver and printer, designer, collector, stylist, craftsman, art gallery manager and exhibition promoter. He designed and made approximately 13,000 objects and decorations. His world was animated by the rigour of art and craftsmanship, but also by unbridled fantasy, surrealist invention and poetry.


Piero Fornasetti - 100 Years of Practical Madness includes more than 700 pieces, sourced mostly from the extraordinary Fornasetti archive in Milan.

The exhibition walks through the artist’s start as a painter in the spirit of Novecento, his artist’s book printing workshop, his collaborations with Gio Ponti in the 1950s and 1960s and the harder 1970s, and goes up until 1988, the year of Fornasetti’s death.




Piero Fornasetti - 100 Years of Practical Madness runs 13 November 2013 – 9 February 2014 at the Triennale di Milano.