Ettore Sottsass

ETTORE SOTTSASS (Austria, 1917 - Italy, 2007).
Console "Tartar".
Edition Memphis s.r.l., Milan, 1985.
Wood and laminated plastic.
Measurements: 195 x 76 x 86 cm.
Design catalogued in the book "Le mobilier du XX siècle", by Pierre Kjellberg (Amateur, 1996) and other monographs on contemporary design.
Sottsass is not only one of the most influential designers of the second half of the 20th century, but also one of the most paradoxical. On the one hand he developed a successful career designing industrial designs for the Olivetti company, from typewriters and computers to office interiors, and on the other he created striking and unconventional objects that challenged the bourgeois clientele to redraw their concept of the limits of "good taste". Between 1981 and 1988, Sottsass created markedly non-conformist furniture together with a small group of international architects, with whom he formed the Memphis Group. The extreme ideas that Sottsass had already elaborated and sketched out in previous decades were implemented in the 1980s, with a playful-looking ease, in collaboration with the founders of Memphis. Together with them, Sottsass discarded traditional design principles and transformed a discipline that had hitherto been governed by production and functionality into a visually communicative spectacle. Like Sottsass himself, design became news, visual sensation and even tactile entertainment.
The "Tartare" console table combines expressive wood grain, a nod to tradition, with laminated plastic surfaces and patterns. Its structure articulates planes and simple lines with regular geometric volumes, playing with the three-dimensional incarnation of a composition typical of the canvases of geometric abstraction.
Ettore Sottsass was a prominent Italian architect and designer of the second half of the 20th century, founder of the Memphis design group. He studied at the Polytechnic University of Turin, and after serving three years in the army, in 1947 he set up his own office in Milan, called "The Studio". He worked as a design consultant for Olivetti for more than twenty years, producing for the firm the "Valentina" typewriter (1969), which revolutionised the market, and the "Elea 9003" calculator, among other classic designs. He was also internationally known as an architect, involved in numerous projects around the world. Throughout his career he collaborated with leading figures in the world of architecture and design, such as Aldo Cibic, James Irvine and Matteo Thun. In 1981 he founded the Memphis Group, of which he was to become one of the leaders, together with Barbara Radice. Sottsass enjoys international prestige thanks to his pioneering work in the renewal of design and architecture, which has managed to overcome the severe functionalism that preceded and followed the Second World War. In his language, this influential master of Italian design places potential energy and vitality at the forefront of the design process.