Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical

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New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened its doors to Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical, a new exhibition set to explore and reevaluate the work of the influental 20th-century designer on the anniversary year of his birth. Sottsass made his name as a revolutionary figure in the architecture and design world over a period of six decades, and here his monumental body of work is reviewed, offering its audience a new insight into his designs and placing him within a broader design rhetoric.

Born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1917, Sottsass studied in Turin, Italy before establishing his first studio in Milan in 1947. Known for his diversity, Sottsass's designs encompassed a variety of art forms and aesthetics, over the course of his career moving away from his modernist beginnings to more experimental forms of postmodernism. Experimenting with mediums became one of his most recognisable traits and his pursuits in architectural drawings, interiors, furniture, machines, ceramics, glass, jewellery, textiles and pattern, painting, and photography are explored throughout the exhibition.

Major pieces include Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants, and Gas Pumps, five of the ceramic totems that comprised a project originally shown at the Galleria Sperone in 1967, while other designs from the decade include the minimalist Superboxes. Meanwhile also on display is the visionary Environment, produced for MoMA's 1972 exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, the system of modular cabinets sought to redefine social norms to create a more flexible way of living.

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It is perhaps his work with design group Memphis, founded by Sottsass in the 1980s, for which he is best known. The radical, short-lived collective developed an unmistakable style, characterised by its disregard for function and challenging of conventional tastes. The forward-thinking furnishings they produced continue to inspire and spark debate, epitomised by such pieces as the bright and bold Carlton Room Divider. The teetering, oddly angled bookcase combines complex cabinetmaking techniques with brightly coloured laminate veneers, demonstrating how Sottsass played with perceptions of high and low art in his creations.

The final section of the exhibition, Masters, presents selections of Sottsass’s lesser-known late work, juxtaposed against the work of four other influential 20th-century artists and designers, Piet Mondrian, Jean-Michel Frank, Gio Ponti and Shiro Kuramata.

Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical is at the MET until 8 October 2017; metmuseum.org