Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams

Combining whimsy and rigorous elegance, Milanese designer Piero Fornasetti (1913-1980) borrowed freely from surrealist and metaphysical artists. His is an art of gestures: a lone parrot on a balustrade evokes the Venetian Renaissance, helium balloons and propellor-driven airplanes conjure up a world of humanized technology. With subversive wit, Fornasetti imaginatively transformed lamps, coffeepots, chairs and plates into agents of humor, provocation and meaning. He produced an endless stream of variations on his personal leitmotifs, including the human hand, the female face, luminescent fish, bizarre creatures of the deep and playing cards. Mauries, contributing editor to Italian art and design magazine FMR , takes the full measure of a metaphysician who went from idealized architectural fantasies to bawdy erotic drawings to obsessive solar symbolism. Publication coincides with an exhibit at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. (Nov.)