The exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein dedicated to the work of Ettore Sottsass is called Rebel and Poet – an apt name to describe one of the greatest Italian designers.
Ettore Sottsass was one of the most important figures in the history of Italian design, a prominent figure and a master greatly loved by young people for his rebellious, transgressive and free personality, but also for his poetic and spiritual side, capable of getting to the root of things and never resting on his laurels. His professional life, which began in the 1950s, was a constant journey of experimentation and innovation, as told by the exhibition Rebel and Poet, running from 14 July to 29 September at the Schaudepot temporary space of the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, on the border with the city of Basel, one of the most important design museums in the world.
Designer and artist, Ettore Sottsass was one of the most significant and nonconformist figures in the landscape of twentieth-century design and architecture. Born in Innsbruck in 1917 and deceased in 2007, he would have turned 100 this year. This is the symbolic occasion to celebrate his multifaceted activity: the Vitra Design Museum leads the way with the exhibition Rebel and Poet, an apt title to define the eclectic personality of Sottsass, his rebellious, transgressive character, always outside the box, and his strongly poetic side. A major exhibition of his work at the Triennale di Milano will follow in autumn.
His long professional career began in the 1950s. His collaboration with the company Olivetti in the 1960s brought him to prominence: as design consultant for the company's new electronics division, he revolutionised the look of all office machines, from the typewriter to the calculator, to the first Italian electronic computer, which he designed in 1958, transforming them into products with a new and modern aesthetic. Valentine, the red portable typewriter that Sottsass designed in 1969 at the height of the pop art era, for example, has become a legendary icon in the history of design, entering the collective memory of more than one generation – even after the advent of computers.
In the course of his life as an inveterate traveller, he explored the United States extensively in the early 1960s, and American culture influenced his projects in which, with apparent lightness of touch, he managed to combine the spirituality of the hippie era with pop culture. His love of India and its ancient civilisation also left a marked impression on his design vision, deepening its philosophical and meditative dimension.
His interdisciplinary work ranged from interior and architectural projects to artistic works in sculpture and ceramics, from furniture and product design to writing, drawing and photography. A multiplicity of expressive languages, all inflecting the same fascinating unconventional design poetic that consistently positioned itself as an alternative to the bourgeois taste prevailing in the design world.
Emblematic of his thinking and design poetic was his participation in the exhibition Italy, the new domestic landscape at the Museum of Modern Art Moma in New York in 1972, where his installation stood as the manifesto of a new era of objects, marking the end of a taste for bourgeois furnishing.
Rebel and poet, Sottsass gave life to experimental cultural movements such as Global tools (1973–1975), studio Alchimia (1976–1980) and, in the 1980s, Memphis with a group of young designers including Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun, George Sowden and Nathalie Du Pasquier. At its first public presentation in Milan in 1981, the Memphis collection caused a sensation, generating a strong and immediate international resonance thanks to its extraordinarily innovative formal language, inspired by pop culture and postmodern philosophy.
Bold colours and daring chromatic contrasts, elementary and deconstructed geometric forms, assertive decoration, materials until then considered humble such as plastic laminate: the combination of these elements upended the visual landscape of interior design, giving rise to imaginative, emotional pieces of furniture capable of communicating empathically with the observer, no longer bound by the traditional concept of form and function that had until then been the guiding principle for the design of everyday products. The Carlton bookcase of 1981 is perhaps the most famous design icon bearing Sottsass's name for Memphis, a true "cult" object now found in museums around the world and in the homes of the greatest collectors.
The exhibition at the Vitra museum presents a selection of works by Sottsass including furniture, products, photographs and writings. It places the emphasis on his constant search for spirituality and his interest in archaic and primitive cultures, in archetypal everyday objects — a direct source of inspiration for the creation of his projects. It is the story of a remarkable individual who, through his body of work, explored the fundamental principles of human existence in an attempt to grasp their deepest essence.
The exhibition runs from 14 July to 29 September, every day from 10am to 6pm. The Vitra Schaudepot is at Charles-Eames-Straße 2, Weil am Rhein (Basel), Germany.