Pietro Fenoglio

Pietro Fenoglio (Turin, 3 May 1865 – Corio, 22 August 1927) was an Italian architect and engineer, considered one of the most important pioneers of Art Nouveau in Italy. Fenoglio quickly grasped the ascendancy of Art Nouveau as it appeared in Italy at the turn of the century as the "Stile Floreale" or "Stile Liberty" (Liberty style, named after the British department store Liberty & Company, a major purveyor of Art Nouveau furniture and decorative arts), during a period when Italian architects were searching for a national style of modern architecture. He took advantage of the very favorable economic climate to become one of the style's most fervent supporters in northern Italy before the First World War. Building little after 1912, Fenoglio parlayed his success as a designer into a diverse set of economic ventures, eventually landing him the directorship of a bank in 1915. Pietro Fenoglio was born in 1865 in Turin, four years after the modern unification of Italy into a single kingdom. His father Giovanni was an administrator, while his mother Giacinta (née Guillot) was the daughter of the former Préfect of Chambéry, who had moved to Turin after Chambéry had been annexed by France in the Treaty of Turin in 1860. After studying civil engineering under Carlo Ceppi at the Regia Scuola di Applicazione per gli Ingegneri di Torino (now the Politecnico di Torino), from which he graduated in 1889, he worked first for the firm of Brayda, Boggio and Reyend before forming his own firm. His first independent commissions in the 1890s exhibited a Gothic-revival style reminiscent of the historical building traditions of Piedmont. Sensing the fashion of the time, however, his interest subsequently turned to Art Nouveau, and after 1900 he became the leading protagonist of the style in Turin. Commissions in a period of rapid economic expansion and prosperity were plentiful and Fenoglio became extremely prolific, establishing his studio at 60, Via XX Settembre, where he designed some of the major Italian examples of Art Nouveau.