Collaborating with figures like Gio Ponti, Fornasetti's atelier became synonymous with bringing art into everyday lives through practical yet artistically adorned objects.

A central motif in his work was the "variations," notably exemplified in the iconic "Tema e Variazioni" series featuring over 400 renditions of opera singer Lina Cavalieri's face.

Art critic and collector Patrick Mauriès said: "It's rare to see such happiness in the act of making and producing, such a sweeping vision, free of any shadow of conflict in the moment of creation: a serene epiphany, an outpouring of inventions.

[7] One decisive factor in starting this activity was meeting Gio Ponti,[8] who pushed him to develop his intuition: to produce everyday objects enriched by the kind of decoration that would bring art into ordinary people's homes.

Fornasetti's work straddles different media, from furniture to paintings by way of tapestries and fashion, applied to a diverse variety of surfaces but maintaining a particularly coherent stylistic code.

Piero Fornasetti spent his childhood in the apartment building built by his father Pietro, in the Città Studi district, where at the time the city ended and the fields began.

I was astonished, ecstatic and in awe of this miracle, and am still always amazed every time at this blossoming of the image I have inside me, emerging all by itself from the page...[13]Together with his penchant for drawing, Fornasetti also soon revealed his tough, determined character,[14] demonstrating his resolve to pursue his aspiration.

From Alberto Savinio to Fabrizio Clerici, by way of Giorgio de Chirico, Massimo Campigli, Lucio Fontana, Michele Cascella, Eugene Berman, Raffaele Carrieri and Carlo Bo:[16] the Fornasetti Art Printshop became a benchmark for many artists of his generation.

The first three almanacs, small publications designed and printed using previously unpublished themes, which started life as Christmas gifts, would inspire a longer series beginning immediately after the war and ending in 1950.

Their work together, which, on his return to Milan, would produce important concepts of interiors and furnishing, design and decoration for houses, apartments, ship cabins or cinema auditoria,[20] was so felicitous that it would eventually induce Gio Ponti to declare: "If one day they write my life story, they'll have to call one of the chapters 'Passion for Fornasetti'.

"With the advent of the Fifties, the creative duo of Ponti and Fornasetti were able to put their point of view into practice: a home interior and furnishing style that they had long been promoting in theory.

A method that envisages "the specific functionality of rooms and furniture, the simplicity and sincerity of forms and materials", the worship of sun, air, and light, and unity of aspiration for all social categories."

At the beginning of those years the couple designed and decorated the "Architettura" trumeau, exhibited at the IX Triennale in 1951 and then auctioned in 1998 at Christie's for fifteen thousand dollars.

The "Architettura" trumeau aims to represent the interaction of modern and ancient, rationalism and the Renaissance, architecture and furniture, structure and decoration, and over time has become one of the icons of Fornasetti's work during the interwar years and the economic boom.

[21] Contrasting unused rooms and traditional houses with the reduced living spaces of the modern age, the two furnished and decorated the Sanremo Casino (1950), an entire apartment that became famous as a symbol of their style, the private home Casa Lucano[22] (1951), and the first-class cabins and lounges of ocean liners such as the Andrea Doria (1952).

Alluring, mysterious, amazed, seductive, with a mustache, glasses, crown or balaclava: over time the face of Lina Cavalieri became the emblem of Fornasetti and his art.

1958 saw the creation of "Stanza metafisica" ("Metaphysical Room"), a work composed of thirty-two hinged, wheelless doors, designed to form a congenial space for meditation, an early example of an artistic installation, first presented at the exhibition at the Tea Centre in London.

The figures, heads, faces, and bodies made of bottles or fruits remained to herald his new pictorial style, alongside abstract compositions that highlighted an unexpected fascination for layers, interactions of colour and different techniques.

[27] In 1984 the "Themes & Variations" gallery opened in London,[28] on the initiative of Liliane Fawcett and Giuliana Medda, which also revived interest in Fornasetti's work overseas, where he was already known.

His oeuvre began to be rediscovered beyond the ideological contrasts of form/function and ornament/utility, and in 1987 Piero collaborated with Patrick Mauriés on the first monograph of his work, accompanied by an introduction by Ettore Sottsass.

(…) I believe that for Fornasetti it was a bit like this: that the set of people, animals, stones, mountains, trees, skies, rains, monuments, cemeteries, and other objects, which in our minds is organised into what we call the world, for him it had really all been blown to pieces.