Ettore Sottsass
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For Ettore Sottsass, there was no hierarchy between a ceramic object, a piece of furniture, a photograph, a text, or a building: each represented a ritual punctuation in a cosmic whole.
An architect, designer, and writer, Ettore Sottsass Jr. (Innsbruck, 1917 – Milan, 2007) was a visionary at every stage of his life. Opposed to the prevailing rationalism, he constantly championed an emotional experience of the object. For him, design was not merely a functional discipline, but a way to redefine the bond between humans and things: “I have always thought that design begins where rational processes end and where magic starts.”
In 1947, he founded his own design studio in Milan, creating his first pieces of furniture and interior designs. Even in that decade, he was already exploring a total practice, as architect, designer, painter, sculptor, scenographer, graphic artist, and critic. His first ceramics, made in 1956, marked a turning point. Sottsass regarded clay as a primordial material, linking humankind to the cosmos and opening the way for a symbolic and ritual function of the object. A trip to India in 1961 and a serious illness in California inspired the series Ceramics of Darkness (1963), a meditation on fragility and light. In 1969, he presented a series of monumental ceramics at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, evoking primitive architectures and shamanic totems.
The 1960s and 1970s were a period of radical experimentation: navigating between design and utopia, Sottsass conceived the Container Furniture series for the MoMA in New York, modular forms intended to challenge the conventions of domestic space. In 1981, he founded the Memphis Group, whose liberating vision of design broke with modern functionalism. Memphis introduced color, pattern, playfulness, and emotion at the heart of the object, with surfaces adorned by his now-iconic Bacterio, Serpente, Rete, and Spugnato motifs, symbols of a new expressiveness.
Sottsass’s ceramics encapsulate his entire design philosophy: a free, sensitive practice in which every form seeks to reconnect humankind with matter and the world.
An architect, designer, and writer, Ettore Sottsass Jr. (Innsbruck, 1917 – Milan, 2007) was a visionary at every stage of his life. Opposed to the prevailing rationalism, he constantly championed an emotional experience of the object. For him, design was not merely a functional discipline, but a way to redefine the bond between humans and things: “I have always thought that design begins where rational processes end and where magic starts.”
In 1947, he founded his own design studio in Milan, creating his first pieces of furniture and interior designs. Even in that decade, he was already exploring a total practice, as architect, designer, painter, sculptor, scenographer, graphic artist, and critic. His first ceramics, made in 1956, marked a turning point. Sottsass regarded clay as a primordial material, linking humankind to the cosmos and opening the way for a symbolic and ritual function of the object. A trip to India in 1961 and a serious illness in California inspired the series Ceramics of Darkness (1963), a meditation on fragility and light. In 1969, he presented a series of monumental ceramics at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, evoking primitive architectures and shamanic totems.
The 1960s and 1970s were a period of radical experimentation: navigating between design and utopia, Sottsass conceived the Container Furniture series for the MoMA in New York, modular forms intended to challenge the conventions of domestic space. In 1981, he founded the Memphis Group, whose liberating vision of design broke with modern functionalism. Memphis introduced color, pattern, playfulness, and emotion at the heart of the object, with surfaces adorned by his now-iconic Bacterio, Serpente, Rete, and Spugnato motifs, symbols of a new expressiveness.
Sottsass’s ceramics encapsulate his entire design philosophy: a free, sensitive practice in which every form seeks to reconnect humankind with matter and the world.
