Born in the countryside of Canelli into a well‑to‑do family, Piero Fogliati (1930–2016) spent most of his life in Turin. As a teenager, he faced the hardships of the postwar period: at thirteen, at the end of the Second World War, his family’s economic difficulties pushed him to emigrate to Switzerland in search of work. His first job was in a loudspeaker and electrical‑repair workshop, an experience that nurtured his curiosity for technology. In 1947 he returned to Italy for military service in Siena and Florence, where he spent his free time in museums. A self‑taught artist, he began by painting hilly and urban landscapes, gradually refining his formation as he moved from Impressionism to Informal painting, eventually arriving at a figuration focused on objects, signs, and atmospheres of the urban‑industrial environment.

After completing his military service, he moved to Turin, where he began working in a body shop, learning to shape sheet metal and honing both manual skill and precision. During these years, the direction of his artistic path became clearer, and he began experimenting with the substitution of pigments through technological means, using mechanical expertise to transform physical phenomena into artistic material. To ensure autonomy and continuity in his research, he organized his life around a studio‑workshop — a small but well‑equipped laboratory with lathes and milling machines that became the center of his practice: “Here, out of necessity, I learned to be orderly and precise.”

The decisive turning point occurred in Turin on a rainy day: walking without an umbrella, he imagined colored raindrops capable of transfiguring the city’s grayness. “The issue at stake was the gray city, and I imagined an aestheticized, fantastic one, made different through transformations that were not banal conveniences.” From this intuition emerged, in the early 1960s, the Fantastic City, an organic project of urban interventions in which the city’s noise, sunlight, wind, and water were transformed into aesthetic and sensory experiences. The vision unfolded into a network of “edicole,” immersive stations scattered throughout the urban fabric: the Noise Auditorium, capable of transforming acoustic chaos into a musical experience; the Temple of Light, where light is treated as a plastic material; and places where Anemofoni and Fleximofoni capture and sonify the wind, turning it into melody. In parallel, a set of “machine‑instruments” took shape — the Liquimofono, the Mechanical Prism, and a long series of projectors, moving screens, and sound‑generating devices — all combining Fogliati’s trust in imagination, his attention to perception, and a declared affection for those who inhabit the city.

A structural element of his method was drawing: his “fixations,” far from being mere technical diagrams, are sheets in which he condensed technical solutions, spatial visions, and emotional, philosophical, and poetic motivations. “My work arises from the exploration of scientific phenomena for the realization of aesthetic results, and I use technology for this sole purpose.” With such statements, it becomes clear that the artist could not recognize his work within the currents of programmed kinetic art or within technological art linked to digital developments.

As for influences, beyond Hieronymus Bosch, Fogliati identified natural phenomena as his primary masters: “Light, Sound, the phenomena of reflection, and color.”

Beginning in the 1960s, he embarked on an exhibition career, with his first solo shows in Florence, Rome, and Turin. In the following years, he took part in national and international exhibitions: two editions of the Venice Biennale (1978 and 1986), the ARTEC Japanese Biennale in Nagoya (1997), and the group exhibition FASTER! BIGGER! BETTER! Signet works of the collections at the ZKM in Karlsruhe (2006). In 1992, the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris dedicated to him the solo exhibition Sculpter l’invisible, while in 2003 Turin hosted the major retrospective Piero Fogliati. Il poeta della luce.

His works are now held in public and private collections, including the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Museion in Bolzano, the Galleria Comunale in Cagliari, MACRO in Rome, the Technorama der Schweiz in Winterthur, the Musée de l’Énergie Électrique in Mulhouse, the AT&T Foundation, the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, the Ma*Ga in Gallarate, the Fondazione Giuliano Gori in Santomato, the Panza Collection in Lugano, and the FAI Collection at Villa Panza.

Fogliati passed away in Turin on 25 March 2016, at the age of eighty‑six.