Ettore Sottsass

Architect and designer Ettore Sottsass produced an expansive body of work that included furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting, and office design. He’s perhaps best known as a co-founder of the Memphis Group design collective, which came together in the 1980s. Twentieth-century movements such as Art Deco and Pop art informed Sottsass’s Memphis aesthetic, which embraced vibrant colors, geometric patterns, and a progressive spirit. Sottsass hoped to infuse vitality and an unpretentious sense of fun into people’s relationships with objects and built environments. He studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Turin before working as a design consultant at Olivetti (an Italian manufacturer then famous for its typewriters), where he began to hone his design philosophy. His work belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.