The exhibition brings together a unique set of major historical pieces by the Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007). In a chronological journey, ranging from the late 1950s until the 2000s, the viewer discovers how Sottsass established his formal language upon his return from New York in 1956 and then during his collaboration with the company Poltronova, of which he became the director artistic the following year. The shapes of the exhibited furniture are simple and geometric, the signs are graphic and primary, and color is now used systematically. Finally, the use and mixing of materials is an opportunity for him to experiment with new techniques creation.

Sottsass also does not hesitate to move from small-scale to monumental with Festone, an extremely rare 3-meter-high pendant lamp in brass and colored perspex, created for the Arredoluce company in 1957. Declaring that «design is above all an emotional experience,» this piece—exhibited this year at the Sottsass retrospective at the Centre Pompidou—radiates the space with harmonious light and creates an intimate atmosphere. Through its shape, it is also reminiscent of the suspended traffic lights on American highways. In New York, Sottsass was likewise influenced by Pop Art, car chromes, neon store signs, and the striped pattern that he used as a decorative element to cover his famous Superbox (1967). Produced by Poltronova, these colorful, sky-scraping cabinets are intended to give «ritual weight to objects.» «It occurred to me to design furniture as a sort of colorful striped towers so that the furniture in bedrooms would resemble apparitions of strange objects that arrived from another world...»

Just like the prototype of the Strutture Tremano pedestal table presented shortly after in the exhibition space could be. Conceived in 1979 by Sottsass for Alchimia, this piece is part of the Bau.Haus collection. Ironically titled «the structure trembles,» this pedestal table with tubular metal legs made to appear unstable explores the idea of banality and kitsch in the everyday environment. After the Alchimia and Memphis movements in the 1980s, Sottsass collaborated with Design Gallery Milano, which also produced works by Andrea Branzi, Michele de Lucchi, Johanna Grawunder, and Pierre Charpin. A true experimental laboratory, DGM allowed Sottsass to work with diverse, often luxurious materials, as evidenced by the Mobile Giallo with its knob handles coated in gold leaf. Finally, in the 2000s, it was his friend and gallerist Clio Calvi who produced some of his most powerful and poetic pieces. Presented here are the impressive Architettura Romantica bed, published in a limited edition of 8 copies in 2004, as well as a unique prototype of a black leather and chromed sofa alongside two Colonna pedestal tables in mahogany and maple, produced in only ten copies. «As always and more than ever, the duty of artists must be to point the way toward fantasy, surprise, and independence.»

Sottsass was always immersed in an artist's environment. A student of the painter Luigi Spazzapan, he took an early interest in the American abstract expressionist movement and later in Pop Art, whose works he associated with his furniture during his exhibitions. In this same vein, «Sottsass au Muy» offers a dialogue between Art and Design within a unique exhibition space created by Rudy Ricciotti.

Ivan Mietton, Curator