Ettore Sottsass

ETTORE SOTTSASS (Austria, 1917 - Italy, 2007).
Sideboard "Casablanca".
Edition Memphis s.r.l., Milan, 1981.
Wood and laminated plastic.
Measurements: 224 x 151 x 40,5 cm.
Design catalogued in "Western furniture. 1350 to the present day", by C. Wilk (London; Victoria & Albert Museum, 1996) and in "A grand design: the art of the Victoria & Albert Museum", by M. Baker and B. Richardson (London; V&A Publications, 1996). Richardson (London; V&A Publications, 1997); "Memphis" by B. Fitoussi (Assouline, 1998); "El design italiano 1964-1990" by A. Branzi (Electa, 1996), "Il design in Italia" by G. Gramigna and P. Biondi (Umberto Allemandi & Co., 1999) and other monographs on contemporary design.
Other examples of the same design are held in prominent collections around the world, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
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 "Casablanca" sideboard was, along with the "Carlton" dividing unit, Sottsass's contribution to the first Memphis collection (1981). The designer created it to combine storage and display, as well as serving as a room divider, and the angled arms are intended to hold wine bottles. Its striking colours, eye-catching pattern and strange winged shape are a clear rejection of the modernist idea that form should conform to function. The bold décor, on the other hand, opposes the purity of much of the unornamented, minimalist furniture of the 1970s and is inspired by the consumer products of the 1950s. At the same time, Sottsass was inspired by the interiors of the typical American diner to use laminated plastic.
Ettore Sottsass was a prominent Italian architect and designer in 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 puts the potential energy and vitality of design and colour before rigidity and intellectuality.