Ettore Sottsass: Biography, Works and Books of the Famous Artist

The work of Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) can best be described by his touch light and unmistakable. Quoting the designer himself: “If you have to tune into something as soft as history, there is no way to do it using hard measures.” A prisoner of war during the Second World War, Sottsass experiences the hopes of post-war reconstruction, the illusions of industrialization and the uncertain advent of the electronic panorama.

Before embarking on the path of design and ceramics, he developed an interest in photography and painting. He will always see himself as an architect who made furniture and a product designer who made buildings and has always found it easy to slip beyond the boundaries of genre, working to add an expressive layer to the functional surfaces of modernism.

During his long collaboration with the Italian manufacturer Olivetti, Sottsass defined a role for himself as a poetic agent of the industry, a creator who he operated on the spectrum between art and commercial production. Sottsass approached design with a humanistic eye for what objects can communicate.

Biography

Ettore Sottsass, architect and designer, was born in the city of Innsbruck in 1917 and is one of the most influential and important figures on the XNUMXth century design scene.

Exposed to the world of architecture from a young age, being the son of an architect, he grew up in Turin where he graduated from the Polytechnic in 1939 before serving in the military during the Second World War and spending years in a labor camp in Yugoslavia. After returning home, he works in his father's studio renovating buildings destroyed during the war, before founding his own studio in Milan to focus on working in different mediums such as ceramics, painting and interior design.

In Milan he immersed himself in the vibrant cultural panorama of the city, frequenting the literary salon which allowed him to meet the illustrious architects and designers of his time, and married the writer and translator Fernanda Pivano who introduced him to the city's literary society and to many writers and artists which would later influence his work beyond his initial approach to industrial design.

During his early years, he became a member of the International Movement for a Bauhaus Imaginista and later moved briefly to New York to work with industrial and modernist design George Nelson. It is in this period that he was commissioned by the entrepreneur Irving Richards an exhibition of works in ceramics, a medium he had pursued since the beginning of his career and which was rapidly launching him into international recognition for its originality and creativity.

However, his turning point came when Adriano Olivetti hired him as a design consultant in 1958 for Olivetti, the most important manufacturer of typewriters and computers in Italy, famous for its incredibly advanced design. In these years his style begins to develop more clearly: bold colors, shape and style of office equipment, pushing the boundaries between industrial design and pop culture. There Valentine typewriter of 1969 becomes a fashion statement in Italian society, earning him fame and recognition as an innovative product designer who is not afraid to break the mold and go beyond functionality and form.

Disappointed by an increasingly voracious industry, Sottsass plans the union of contemporary avant-garde, Pop, poverty and conceptual suggestions, with the idea of ​​a "reassuring" design, a supporter of an alternative consumerism to that imposed by "advertising company".

In 1981 he founded the Memphis group together with Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Andrea Branzi, Michele de Lucchi and other names on the international scene.

Born in Milan, Memphis brings together a group of young designers and architects, coming from all over the world and led by Ettore Sottsass, animated by the need to design other spaces and environments compared to what was then the panorama of furniture-related furnishings . Since its first appearance, the shapes, colors and decorations of Memphis have changed the face ofcontemporary decor.

In the last years of his life he dedicated himself to criticism and passed away in Milan on 31 December 2007 after having achieved a large number of awards all over the world.

The works

Architecture

Sottsass's work as an architect began at a young age, when he collaborated with his father in the early 50s. He continues until the 60s and the period of radical architecture, which was born from the critical spirit towards the cultural context of the moment, up to the projects of Studio Sottsass and Associates.

His works as an architect range from private homes to exhibition spaces (Fiorucci 1980), both nationally and internationally: Wolf House (Colorado, USA – 1985), Bar Zibibbo (Fukuoka, Japan – 1989), Casa Olabuenaga (Maui, USA – 1989), an entire village in Singapore (2000), the Museum of Contemporary Furnishings in Ravenna. All these are clear examples of the anthropocentric philosophy that pervades Sottsass's works. An idea confirmed by the project for Malpensa 2000, an airport made of anti-reflective and sound-absorbing materials, a place of gathering with linear designs, created to promote meditation and combat the speed and stress that a modern departure place might suggest.

Design and drawings

And especially in furniture design that the innovative strength of Sottsass's ingenuity knows no obstacles, making the architect a central figure in international design.

In advance of the years of protest, he had indicated design as a tool of social criticism, paving the way for the great season of Radical Design (1966 – 1972) and the affirmation of the need for a new aesthetic: more ethical, social, political.

When Olivetti asked him to design the first Italian computer in 1959, Sottsass decided to create a machine that accentuated the occult mystery of an unknown technology. The result is Elea, a gigantic polished aluminum console that created a ghostly reflection. Sottsass's design projected a feeling for the fantastic, which became a defining characteristic of him.

Ten years later, Sottsass transfers this energy to his iconic red portable typewriter. The resulting Valentine is an object focused on personal empowerment rather than on function. The Valentine typewriter presupposed the pop verve of today's consumer electronics.

Sottsass's radical break with Olivetti and industrial design came in the form of the Memphis group. Announced as “The New International Style“, the pleasantly chaotic vision of Memphis transformed into a success that transcended design. It captured a moment of thought, an impulse to graft something heterogeneous and counter-rational onto the unyielding mold of modernism. Sottsass described Memphis as a “boiling cauldron of mutations” that produced “bastard objects” through a style that crossed metaphor and utopia. It was an experiment that incited a veritable revolt in the design world, freely clashing styles and transporting materials such as plastic laminate from the kitchen to the living room.

It was at the beginning of the 80s that some of his most iconic pieces were created: the Carlton bookcase, the Beverly "sideboard", and "Casablanca", a totem wardrobe with playful shapes and bright colors that goes beyond the concept of classic furniture, although it takes itself traditional structural elements (the square base and the gable that surmounts the building).

Vases

As for his famous vases, Sottsass was attracted by the history of ceramics, a medium which, especially in Italy, boasts a thousand-year tradition that starts from the Etruscans, the Greeks and evolves in the Middle Ages and Renaissance with majolica.

Bittossi's artistic director, with whom Sottsass collaborates, leaves him free reign. “The shapes are simple” wrote Sottsass himself in a 1970 issue of Domus “large bowls, ancient bowls with very primordial colors or ancient goblets like those perhaps used in Mycenae or Galilee or Ur or anywhere else, for drinking from a spring. It seemed to me then that it was possible to rediscover archetypal forms... in other words, forms discovered by humanity at the dawn of time and which are deeply rooted in its history». In fact, Sottsass's interest in archetypal forms persisted, using for example the chalice to delve into the meaning of his ceramic designs.

While most of Sottsass's pieces were intended for mass production, there will be two series of handmade ceramic objects. In 1963 he created the first, “Ceramics of Darkness”, a series of large dark vases representing his descent into illness, with a pattern of circles – full moon and eclipse, so called because they were drawn at night, in the dark. “I couldn't sleep, my brain still worked, I still got ideas, I wrote and drew,” she recalled.

Source images: Wikimedia Commons