Synopsis
Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass is celebrated internationally for his contribution to architecture, industrial and furniture design, ceramics, jewelry, crafts, graphic design, and photography. He founded the Memphis group, and through its startling, eclectic and irreverent aesthetic he dominated furniture and interior style for over a decade. Almost every area of modern design displays his influence.
Featuring over 100 full-page illustrations - photographs, architectural drawings, sketches, collages - this monograph explores Sottsass's work in all his many fields of activity, including his world-famous office products for Olivetti, and his colorful Memphis furniture.
Barbara Radice, a long-time companion of Sottsass, gives a sensitive account of his life and work, drawing on her keen understanding of his talents, personality, preoccupations, likes and dislikes. She outlines his working methods, describes the inspiration he draws from popular culture, follows him on his constant travels, and explains the interactions necessary for his long-term responsibilities at Olivetti's design division. This is a splendidly complete summary of the career and achievement of Ettore Sottsass, one of the most stimulating, innovative, inspired and entertaining in modern times. Barbara Radice is the editor of Terrazzo and regular contributor to several Italian art and design magazines. She was co-author of Sottsass Associates (1989).
Reviews
Italian designer and architect Sottsass is known for his eclectic, irreverent, often startling concepts. His architecture fuses local traditions and modern technology, as in the riotously colorful, Corbusier-like Wolf House, a villa in Colorado which Radice, his longtime companion, aptly dubs "a metaphysical object dropped in a wild landscape." Sottsass's iconoclastic furniture includes "superboxes" or plastic laminate closets, the minimalist beds made of chromed metal and lacquered wood. This informal, lavishly illustrated monograph also showcases the typewriters, chairs and computers he designed for Olivetti, as well as colorful ceramic columns and "totems" inspired by his travels in India. Radice, editor of the journal Terrazzo , profiles a restless, innovative man, an obsessive traveler whose works channel "cultural nomadism" into a source of creative energy.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Sottsass's innovative approach to architectural, furniture, ceramic, jewelry, and industrial design has been extensively documented in recent books and periodicals. Radice, qualified as Sottsass's longtime companion and an experienced writer about architecture and design ( Jewelry by Architects , Rizzoli, 1987), here provides unique insights into how the man approaches both his life and his work. However, she stereotypically presents the artist as a genius full of passion and energy, yet tormented and self-absorbed, resulting in a mix that is quirky and noncritical. Radice provides little analysis, only admiration for all that Sottsass produces. The numerous examples of Sottsass's drawings and designs, from the 1930s to the present, are often more illuminating than the text.
- Douglas G. Campbell, George Fox Coll., Newberg, Ore.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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