artistic evolution progressed. 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 Sixties and Seventies: a new cultural climate At the end of the Sixties, the cultural climate changed. The affirmation of rationalism and function over form seemed to leave little room for the concept of decoration. Fornasetti struggled to align himself with the new logic of the market and industrial production. The difficulties encountered in this period also led to a cooling in relations with Ponti, who reproached Fornasetti for being unable to reinvent himself. In this same period, Piero succeeded in shaping the conceptual side of his approach. In the Seventies he opened a space that offered him a way of giving continuity to his work with other instruments: in 1970, together with a group of friends, he ran the Galleria dei Bibliofili, where he exhibited both his own work and that of contemporary artists. Piero began drawing again. 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. The-eighties: rediscovery and the London gallery "Themes and Variations" In 1984 the "Themes & Variations" gallery opened in London, 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. The book was published posthumously – Piero Fornasetti died in 1988 during a minor operation in hospital. After Piero's death in October 1988, his son Barnaba Fornasetti kept a part of his father's activity going. The Fornasetti style Following the rediscovery of Italian classicism promoted by the Novecento Italiano artistic movement of the time, Fornasetti's work was inspired on the one hand by Piero della Francesca, Giotto, and Renaissance frescoes, and on the other by metaphysical painting. These two worlds come together in Fornasetti through the virtuosity that distinguished his artistic activity. Fornasetti's style is full of theatricality, an invitation to the imagination,