Sotsass, Ettorre

Ettore Sottsass was born in 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria. From 1935 to 1939, he studied architecture at the Turin Polytechnic. During his studies, he wrote articles on art and interior design together with the Turin designer Luigi Spazzapan. From 1942 to 1945, Sottsass served in the Italian army, after which he worked with a group of architects including Giuseppe Pagano. In 1947, he founded his own firm, “Studio,” in the center of Milan. In 1956, Ettore briefly worked for George Nelson’s design firm. A year later, he was appointed artistic director of Poltronova in Italy. A year later, he was a design consultant for Olvetti, and a year after that, he received a Compasso d’Oro. When Etore Sottsass returned from a trip to India in 1961, he spent some time creating designs inspired by oriental forms. Exhibitions of Sottsass’s work have been shown in Berlin, Venice, Paris, Sydney, Barcelona, ​​and Jerusalem, among other cities. He has given guest lectures at English universities and co-founded the Memphis design group in 1981. That same year, he and his fellow Memphis members Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini, and Aldo Cibic established the Sottsass Associati design studio in Milan. Besides interiors, Sottsass has created a wide range of other designs, including jewelry for Cleto Munari, metalwork for Alessi, and tableware for Swid Powell.