"Architettura"
Piero Fornasetti|Gio Ponti
designed 1951; manufactured 1975 · Screen-printed wood fiberboard, mahogany, brass, wire, electric light · Modern and Contemporary Art
Although historical precedent provides the formal and decorative inspiration for this drop-front writing cabinet (sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist architectural compositions and furniture in particular), there is a surreal quality to Fornasetti's witty and inventive architectural fantasy, which plays games with perspective and preconceptions of interior and exterior space. The desk represents a collaboration between the architect Ponti, who designed the pared-down yet still traditional form, and the designer Fornasetti—a former student of Ponti—who was responsible for the exuberant, pseudo-illusionist decoration.
- Artist
- Piero Fornasetti|Gio Ponti
- Date
- designed 1951; manufactured 1975
- Medium
- Screen-printed wood fiberboard, mahogany, brass, wire, electric light
- Department
- Modern and Contemporary Art
- Credit line
- John C. Waddell Collection, Gift of John C. Waddell, 1997
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