Ettore Sottsass

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Ettore Sottsass Jr. (Born September 14, 1917 in Innsbruck ; † December 31, 2007 in Milan ) was an Italian architect and designer of furnishings , which he designed primarily in the style of "anti-design" that he strongly influenced and that made him internationally known and successful made.

12th Milan Triennial , furniture for interiors designed by Sottsass. Photo by Paolo Monti , 1960.

Life

The calculating machine "Summa 19" for Olivetti, 1970

Sottsass was born as the son of Antonia Peintner and the architect Ettore Sottsass senior (* 1892, † 1954). At the end of the 1920s, he moved to Turin with his family. There he began to study architecture at the Turin Polytechnic in 1935 , from which he graduated in 1939. Due to seven years of military service, it was not until 1946 that Sottsass could begin his work as an architect, designer and painter in Milan. In 1947 he founded his own studio there. In 1949 he married the journalist and music critic Fernanda Pivano (* 1917, † 2009) from Genoa. In 1957 Sottsass became artistic director of "Poltronova" . He experimented with the new material fiberglass and used it to develop contemporary furniture and lighting fixtures.

In 1958 he began working with the office machine manufacturer Olivetti , and his unconventional designs soon caused a sensation, such as the design of the first Italian computer, Olivetti Elea . His best-known design for Olivetti is probably the red Olivetti Valentine typewriter designed in 1968 . It is now one of the most famous design classics. The Pop Art influenced the interior of its "Guglielmo Bar" in Milan and the furniture collections for Poltrona Frau 1965-1967. The striped wooden cubicle cabinets Superbox date from Sottsass' time in Stockholm in 1969 .

His designs turned against the representative property character of the objects; rather, Sottsass playfully expressed everyday culture in his designs. In a short time, Sottsass became one of the leading representatives of "anti-design" .

The "Mickey Mouse Table" for the industrial design company Bonacina (1972) and the "Yellow Secretary Chair" for Olivetti (1973) added an element of irony and humor to his radical departure from traditional design.

In 1980 he founded his own company, the "Ettore Sottsass Associati" . The Memphis Design Group, which he co-founded in December 1980, was also very successful , an association of architects and designers that heralded the end of the ' international style ' and linked its name with the turn to emotional design and postmodernism . In addition to Sottsass, the founding members of “Memphis” also included Michele De Lucchi , Marco Zannini, Barbara Radice, Aldo Cibic and Matteo Thun . In 1988 the Memphis design group was dissolved by Sottsass.

Nuovo Milano cutlery for Alessi 1987
BUSSTOPS stop in Hanover, 1994

In 1994 Sottsass created a highly regarded bus stop on Königsworther Platz in Hanover as part of the BUSSTOPS art project . It consists of eight large yellow crosses symbolizing the 20th century on a speckled stone base and a white roof.

Exhibitions of Sottsass' life's work there was, for example, at the Biennale in Venice in 1976, the Center Pompidou in Paris (1994) and the Design Museum London of 2007.

Ettore Sottsass died in his Milan apartment of cardiac decompensation due to a virus flu.

Design (selection)

  • 1957 Elea 9003 computer for Olivetti
  • 1964 Tekne typewriter for Olivetti
  • 1964 Typewriter Praxis 48 for Olivetti
  • 1965 Furniture collections for Poltrona Frau
  • Miss don't you like caviar chair (1987) Courtesy Center Pompidou, Paris
    1965 Superbox cabinet for Poltronova
  • 1968 Valentine portable typewriter for Olivetti
  • 1970 Mobili Grigi for Poltrona
  • 1970 Summa calculating machine for Olivetti
  • 1972 Mickey Mouse table for Bonacina
  • 1973 Sistema 45 office chair for Olivetti
  • 1978 Salt shaker 5070 for Alessi
  • 1980 Sedia da Pranzo chair No. 5 for Kumewa
  • 1981 Carlton bookcase for Memphis (later Vitra )
  • 1981 Tahiti table lamp for Memphis
  • 1982 Murmansk fruit bowl for Memphis
  • 1982 Callimaco floor lamp for Artemide
  • 1983 Pausania table lamp for Artemide
  • 1983 Park Lane dining table for Memphis
  • 1984 M24 computer for Olivetti
  • 1987 Nuovo Milano cutlery for Alessi
  • 1993 La Bella Tavola porcelain dinner service for Alessi

Architecture (selection)

  • 1952 School in Predazzo (with Ettore Sottsass sr.)
  • 1955 House in Pont-Saint-Martin (Aosta Valley)
  • 1966 Guglielmo Bar in Milan, Italy
  • 1985 Apartment building in Marina di Massa, Italy.
  • 1985/1986 renovation and remodeling of parts of the Esprit house in Düsseldorf.
  • 1985/1986 Vogelsanger Weg warehouse in Düsseldorf
  • 1989 Bar Zibibbo in Fukuoka, Japan.
  • 1989 Casa Olabuenaga on Maui, Hawaii, USA
  • 1993 Casa Ghella in Rome, Italy
  • 1993 Casa Green in London, England
  • 1994 Bus stop at Königsworther Platz in Hanover, BUSSTOPS art project
  • 2000 Milan Airport, Malpensa, Italy

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1972 "Italy: A New Domestic Landscape", Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 1976 Venice Biennale
  • 1994 Center Pompidou, Paris
  • 2001 Memphis Remembered, Design Museum, London
  • 2002 Memphis - art / kitsch / cult, a design movement changes the world. Looshaus Vienna, Austria.
  • 2002 Memphis - 21 years after the design revolution. Kunsthalle Krems , Austria.
  • 2007 Design Museum, London
  • 2007 Salone degli Incanti dell 'ex Pescheria, Trieste
  • 2010 We Were Exuberant and Still Had Hope. Ettore Sottsass: Works from Stockholm, 1969. Marres Centrum voor Contemporaine Cultuure, Maastricht , Netherlands.
  • 2015 Design Museum, London
  • 2015 Friedman Benda Gallery, New York
  • 2017 Ettore Sottsass - rebel and poet , Vitra Design Museum , Weil am Rhein
  • 2017 Il Vetro , Le Stanze Del Vetro, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

Awards (selection)

  • 1959 Compasso d'Oro (for Elea)
  • 1970 Compasso d'Oro (for Valentine)
  • 1989 Compasso d'Oro (for Nuovo Milano)
  • 1994 IF Design Award

literature

  • Ettore Sottsass: Metafore. Skira, Geneva / Milan 2002.
  • Lilli Hollein : Memphis - Art / Kitsch / Cult - A design movement changes the world, Vienna: Verlag Der Apfel, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-85450-715-4 .
  • Hans Höger : Ettore Sottsass jr. - Designer, artist, architect. Wasmuth, Tübingen / Berlin 1993.
  • Sally Schöne (ed.): Ettore Sottsass. The Tower of Babel was also made of burnt earth , Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86832-081-7 . (Complete chronology of the ceramic oeuvre.)
  • Ettore Sottsass: Sottsass Ceramics. Thames & Hudson, London 1995.
  • Life and work . Bangert, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-925560-62-9 .
  • Sottsass Sketch Book. Milan 1976.
  • Ettore Sottsass: Advanced Studies. Tokyo 1986-1990.
  • Cristiano Marchegiani: Sottsass (Sot-Sas), Ettore. In: General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples. Andreas Beyer - Bénédicte Savoy - Wolf Tegethoff (ed.), Volume 105, De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2019, pp. 125–127.

Web links

Commons : Ettore Sottsass  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Ettore Sottsass's biography on kettererkunst.de
  2. Memphis FAZ Magazin January 2017
  3. List of monuments of the city of Düsseldorf
  4. Commons: Vogelsanger Weg 49 (Düsseldorf)
  5. Ettore Sottsass: Designer of the world, 2017, Montsoreau Castle.