Pietro Terzini didn’t set out to be an artist. Born in 1990 and trained in architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan, he spent his early 20s working in design offices across Italy and Denmark. But in the wake of the 2012 economic slump architecture jobs dried up, and Pietro pivoted—first into marketing, then unexpectedly into art. What began as a creative outlet quickly grew into a full-fledged career.
“I started writing short sentences on luxury fashion packaging and posting them on Instagram,” he recalls. At the time he was working on Chiara Ferragni’s marketing team. “I had a lot of boxes from brands like Gucci and Dior lying around, and I liked the idea of turning them into something emotional or ironic.” Pietro scrawled over the packages’ pristine logos and the resulting images found an audience fast.
This year Pietro’s practice entered a new chapter with a new design collaboration: a series of screen-printed mirrors created for Cassina. Photo by Chris Force
Pietro’s pieces, which blended pop culture references with social critique, began circulating widely online. A US gallery soon reached out offering him his first solo show. “I wasn’t a professional artist yet so it was a big jump,” he says. “But I made 20 pieces in a few weeks, sent them off, and everything took off from there.”
His work was a perfect fit for social media, especially in Italy where he now commands a large following. While his visual language is minimalist—just cleverly placed words, like the time he hired a plane to cloud-write “Gang” over a massive Gucci billboard—his influences are broad. As a teenager Pietro fell in love with American culture after seeing Space Jam. Basketball replaced soccer and Michael Jordan replaced national idols. “That movie changed everything,” he says. “I got into R&B, sneaker culture, American hip-hop. Later I studied American architecture too—Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn. I even flew to the US and rented a car just to see Fallingwater in person.”
Music still plays a major role. “Kanye was huge for me,” he says. “Not just the music, but the fashion and attitude. I once traveled hours to buy the first Yeezys. That was before sneaker culture was mainstream.” More recently he’s traded messages with SZA, a fan of his work who once told him she was going through a breakup after seeing one of his posts. “That was wild,” he says.
This year Pietro’s practice entered a new chapter with a new design collaboration: a series of screen-printed mirrors created for Cassina, the Italian furniture company known for its historical links to modernism. Titled “Me From Outside,” the project includes three mirrors, each printed with a phrase meant to provoke reflection—literal and psychological.
The first, “We see what we want to see,” will remain in Cassina’s permanent collection. “It’s about how our perceptions are shaped by our own biases and experiences,” Pietro explains. The other two, “Sometimes I lie,” and “I love you,” are limited editions of 100 pieces each, signed on the back. “They’re about how we relate to ourselves in the mirror. The mirror doesn’t always show the truth. And sometimes we lie to ourselves.”
The collaboration debuted during Milan Design Week with a full-room installation in the Cassina showroom, filled with mirrors that reflected endlessly back on themselves. Visitors were encouraged to snap selfies—bringing the project full circle to its social media roots. “My art is 50% physical and 50% digital,” Pietro says. “You see it in person, then you photograph it and it becomes content. I try to make work that feels simple but says something real,” he says. “Art that doesn’t just sit on a wall but makes you stop—even if just for a second—and look at yourself differently.”
