Ettore Sottsass (14 September 1917 – 31 December 2007) was an
InnsbruckInnsbruck is the capital city of the federal state of Tyrol in western Austria. It is located in the Inn Valley at the junction with the Wipptal , which provides access to the Brenner Pass, some south of Innsbruck...
-born
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
architectAn architect is trained and licensed in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e. chief builder...
and designer of the late 20th century. Sottsass was a flamboyant, influential, highly original and occasionally despised Italian designer and architect who was a leading member of the group which established postwar Italy's reputation for design. Sottsass made his name in the 1960s as an industrial designer for Olivetti (particularly the iconic red Valentine portable typewriter).
Sottsass was born September 14 1917, in Innsbruck,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, and grew up in
MilanMilan in Italy, is the capital of the region of Lombardia and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while the urban area is the fifth largest in the E.U. with an estimated population of 4.3 million...
, where his father was an architect.
Ettore Sottsass (14 September 1917 – 31 December 2007) was an
InnsbruckInnsbruck is the capital city of the federal state of Tyrol in western Austria. It is located in the Inn Valley at the junction with the Wipptal , which provides access to the Brenner Pass, some south of Innsbruck...
-born
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
architectAn architect is trained and licensed in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e. chief builder...
and designer of the late 20th century. Sottsass was a flamboyant, influential, highly original and occasionally despised Italian designer and architect who was a leading member of the group which established postwar Italy's reputation for design. Sottsass made his name in the 1960s as an industrial designer for Olivetti (particularly the iconic red Valentine portable typewriter).
Career
Sottsass was born September 14 1917, in Innsbruck,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, and grew up in
MilanMilan in Italy, is the capital of the region of Lombardia and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while the urban area is the fifth largest in the E.U. with an estimated population of 4.3 million...
, where his father was an architect. In 1939 he graduated from Politecnico di Torino in
TurinTurin is a major city as well as a business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River surrounded by the Alpine arch...
with a degree in architecture. He served in the Italian military and spent much of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in a concentration camp in
YugoslaviaYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century.The first country to be known by this...
. After returning from the war, he set up his own architectural and industrial design studio in Milan in 1947, one of a new group of Italian designers which included
Gio PontiGio Ponti was one of the most important Italian architects, industrial designers, furniture designers, artists, and publishers of the twentieth century.-Background and early life:...
and
Carlo MollinoCarlo Mollino was an Italian architect and designer.- Biography :Born in Turin, Piedmont, Carlo Mollino was the son of Eugenio Mollino, an engineer...
dedicated to postwar reconstruction.
Interested in south Asia, Sottsass traveled to India only to return to Italy a very sick man. Luckily, Sottsass had been befriended by Adriano Olivetti, son of
Camillo OlivettiCamillo Olivetti was an Italian electrical engineer and founder of Olivetti & Co., SpA., the Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines....
, a leading northern Italian industrial magnate. When Sottsass returned to his homeland, Olivetti was so concerned about the health of his friend that he gave Sottsass a blank check to seek a cure in the United States. While spending a year in and out of California hospitals, Sottsass managed to make friends with
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem "Howl" , in which he celebrates fellow members of the Beat Generation and critiques what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States.-Early life and family:Ginsberg was born into...
and
Lawrence FerlinghettiLawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, as well as other leaders of the
Beat GenerationThe Beat Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired...
. Rejuvenated in health and spirit, Sottsass returned to Milan where he began working as a consultant designing the
OlivettiIng. C. Olivetti & Co., SpA., known as Olivetti, is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- History :...
's electronic equipment, typewriters and office furniture in 1959, despite his lack of technical knowledge. He designed a pop-influenced “totem”, and the ELEA 9003 calculator over his 40 years working with Olivetti. His redesign of the ELEA 9003, Olivetti's mainframe computer, won him Italy's highest design award in 1959. Sottsass added blocks of color to distinguish the various components of the computer from one another and lowered the height of the machine so workers could see one another over the top.
In 1969 he, along with Perry King, designed the bright red portable Olivetti Valentine typewriter with a lightweight plastic case. It became the ultimate fashion accessory for the “girl-about-town” of that era. Compared with the typical drab typewriters of the day, the 1969 Valentine was more pop art than industrial machine.
In 1981, Sottsass and an international group of young architects and designers, all in their 30s except for Sottsass who was 64, came together to form the
Memphis GroupThe Memphis Group was an Italian design and architecture movement of the 1980s.-Group members:The group was grouped by Ettore Sottsass led on 16 December 1980, and resolved to meet again with their designs in February 1981. The result was a highly-acclaimed debut at the 1981 Salone del Mobile of...
. A night of drinking and listening to
Bob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was, at first, an informal chronicler and then an apparently reluctant figurehead of social unrest...
’s ‘’
Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" is a song by Bob Dylan that appears on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. The album version also appears on 1971's Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II. Another version of the song appears on the 1976 live album Hard Rain, and was also released as a...
’’ gave the group its name. Memphis was launched with a collection of 40 pieces of furniture, ceramics, lighting, glass and textiles which featured fluorescent colors, slick surfaces, intentionally lop-sided shapes and squiggley laminate patterns. Some critics of Memphis claimed that only affluent Dallas psychiatrists would ever buy such designs.
The groups colorful, ironic pieces departed considerably from his earlier, more strictly
modernistModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...
work, and that was hailed as one of the most characteristic examples of Post-modernism in design and the arts. Sottsass described Memphis in a 1986
Chicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company...
article: "Memphis is like a very strong drug. You cannot take too much. I don't think anyone should put only Memphis around: It's like eating only cake."
As an industrial designer, his clients included
FiorucciFiorucci is an Italian fashion label founded by Elio Fiorucci in 1967. The first shop exposed Milan to the styles of Swinging London and American classics such as the T-shirt and jeans. By the late 1970s and early 1980s this would be reversed, and the New York store would become famous for the...
,
EspritEsprit may refer to:*Enthusiasm*Esprit, a French literary magazine*Esprit, a model of automobile manufactured by Lotus Cars*ESPRIT, European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology...
, the Italian furniture company Poltronova, Knoll International, and
AlessiAlessi is a kitchen utensil company from Italy. They design everyday items from plastic and stainless steel.From the 1980s onward, Alessi has been particularly associated with the notion of "designer" objects - otherwise ordinary tools and objects executed as high design, particularly in a...
. As an architect, he designed the Mayer-Schwarz Gallery on
Rodeo DriveRodeo Drive of Beverly Hills, California is a shopping district famous for designer label and haute couture fashion...
in
Beverly Hills, CaliforniaBeverly Hills is a city in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. The area's "Platinum Triangle" of wealthy neighborhoods is formed by Beverly Hills and...
, with its dramatic doorway made of irregular folds and jagged angles, and the home of
David M. KelleyDavid M. Kelley is an American businessman, entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and teacher. He is founder, chairman, and managing partner of the design firm IDEO and a professor at Stanford University...
, designer of Apple's first computer mouse, in
Woodside, CaliforniaWoodside is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It uses a council-manager system of government.Woodside is among the wealthiest communities in the world....
. In the mid 1990's he designed the sculpture garden and entry gates of the
W. Keith and Janet Kellogg GalleryThe California State Polytechnic University, Pomona College Environmental Design also known as the Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design is one of Cal Poly Pomona's seven colleges. The college houses over 1,600 students; making it one of largest environmental design programs in the...
at the campus of Cal Poly Pomona. He collaborated with well known figures in the architecture and design field, including Aldo Cibic,
James IrvineJames Irvine may refer to:* James Irvine , politician, Vice-President of Pennsylvania* James Irvine , chemist and Principal of the University of St Andrews...
,
Matteo Thun- The Early Years:Famous architect and designer, Matteo Thun was born in 1952 in Bolzano, Italy. He studied at the Salzburg Academy with the supervision of Oskar Kokoschka. He then obtained a degree in architecture in Florence, Italy, in 1975...
.
Sottsass had a vast body of work; furniture, jewellery, ceramics, glass, silver work, lighting, office machine design and buildings which inspired generations of architects and designers. In 2006 the
Los Angeles County Museum of ArtThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
held the first major museum survey exhibition of his work in the United States. A retrospective exhibition,
Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress, was held at the
Design MuseumThe Design Museum is a museum by the River Thames near Tower Bridge in central London, England. The museum covers product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design...
in London in 2007.
External links