Piero Fornasetti (Milan, November 10, 1913 – Milan, October 15, 1988) was an Italian artist, designer, and entrepreneur. Fornasetti was active as a designer, decorator, painter, curator, and printer.

In the 1940s, Fornasetti founded in Milan the design and decorative arts atelier bearing his name, Fornasetti, which has become today, under the artistic direction of his son Barnaba Fornasetti, a well-known reality worldwide. Crucial for the start of the activity was his encounter with Gio Ponti, who encouraged him to develop his intuition: to produce everyday objects enriched by decoration that would bring art into everyone’s homes. Thus was born the Fornasetti atelier, an example of the principle of “practical madness,” expressed in a creativity in tune with the practicality of the object. Porcelains, furniture, and furnishing accessories represent, today as then, the heart of Fornasetti’s production.

In 1952, Piero began working on what would become his most famous and iconic series: “Theme and Variations.” Starting from a portrait of a woman seen in a late 19th-century magazine, he began a representative search that accompanied him throughout his life. It is the face of Lina Cavalieri, an opera singer who lived between the 19th and 20th centuries, known at the time as the most beautiful woman in the world. The series attracted a wide audience of writers and intellectuals.