ALBERTO PINTO: CLASSICS

With an international clientele--among whom may be numbered royalty, giants of industry, and leaders of state--it is no wonder that interior designer and decorator of renown Alberto Pinto feels himself best suited to the shadows--albeit the shadows of the great. From this privileged position he subtly shapes lifestyles and, to a certain extent, the images of princes.

In Alberto Pinto: Classics, author Philippe Renaud offers us an intimate glimpse of Pinto's world, a world of exquisite luxury and opulence, a world in which, by Pinto's hand, elegance and abundance are brought to balance in harmonious accord. We are shown the magnificent interiors of apartments in New York, mansions in Paris, villas on the Riviera, country houses in England, and palaces in Cairo. We are also brought to a ranch in the deserts of New Mexico and to the ocean-side hills of Long Island's elegant Hamptons.

Here we find Pinto's cultivated but decidedly eclectic approach to design--an indirect result, perhaps, of his having grown up in post-colonial Casablanca. His roots are Moroccan--under the certain influence of Paris. Of course, his work is more than this: it is an amalgam of British chic, French elegance, and American rationalism; it is a manipulation of classical styles with a twist; it is frequently a brilliantly daring tendency to juxtaposition and apparent paradox in which a surrealistic painting by Magritte might hang below a Neoclassical bust--all of this ultimately resounding in an affirmation of Alberto Pinto as the interior designer and decorator of choice.

Philippe Renaud, the author, is also author of Mon nounours a des bobos. He has written many books on the decorative arts, including the monographs Hilton McConnico, Philippe Starck, and Garouste and Bonetti. He has also written on color, flowers, and antique toys.

William Wheeler, the book's translator, has written and translated numerous books on gradening and the decorative arts. Previously for Rizzoli, he translated Daum: Master of French Decorative Glass. He is the author of Le Potager du Roi.