Sottsass, Ettore

▪ 2008

      Italian industrial designer

born Sept. 14, 1917, Innsbruck, Austria-Hungary

died Dec. 31, 2007, Milan, Italy

brought bold colours, contemporary style, and ironic wit to everyday items, creating strikingly postmodern furniture, electronic gear, and domestic accessories. As a consultant (1958–80) for Olivetti, he designed some of his most memorable products, including the Elea 9003 computer (1959) and the red plastic Valentine portable typewriter (1969), which he dubbed his “anti-machine machine.” Sottsass graduated (1939) in architecture from the Turin (Italy) Polytechnic, and after his World War II military service, he settled in Milan, where he was commissioned to design furniture for postwar public housing. After being introduced to Pop art during a 1956 trip to the U.S., he joined Olivetti. In the early 1980s he founded the Memphis group of international postmodern designers and architects. Sottsass's striking and often whimsical work was the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (1994), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2006), the Design Museum in London (2007), and venues in Trieste, Italy (2007–08).

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