18 Facts About Ettore Sottsass

Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria, and grew up in Turin, where his father, named Ettore Sottsass, was an architect.

The elder Sottsass belonged to the modernist architecture group Movimento Italiano per l'Architectura Razionale, which was led by Giuseppe Pagano.

The younger Ettore Sottsass was educated at the Politecnico di Torino in Turin and graduated in 1939 with a degree in architecture.

Ettore Sottsass's work was often associated with pop culture with his brightly colored whimsical objects.

Ettore Sottsass's pieces were often made out of glass and ceramic.

In 1949 Ettore Sottsass married Fernanda Pivano, a writer, journalist, translator and critic.

In 1956, Ettore Sottsass traveled to New York City and began working in the office of George Nelson.

Also in 1956, Ettore Sottsass was commissioned by the American entrepreneur Irving Richards on an exhibition of his ceramics.

Back in Italy in 1957, Ettore Sottsass joined Poltronova, a semi-industrial producer of contemporary furniture, as an artistic consultant.

In 1956, Ettore Sottsass was hired by Adriano Olivetti as a design consultant for Olivetti, to design electronic devices and develop the first Italian mainframe computer, the Elea 9003 for which he was awarded the Compasso d'Oro in 1959.

Ettore Sottsass's concern that his creativity would have been stifled by corporate work is documented in his 1973 essay "When I was a Very Small Boy".

Ettore Sottsass founded the Memphis Group in Milan on 11 December 1980, after the Bob Dylan song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" played during the group's inaugural meeting.

Ettore Sottsass Associati was established in 1980 and gave the possibility to build architecture on a substantial scale as well as to design for large international industries.

In 1985, Ettore Sottsass left Memphis to focus on the Associati.

Ettore Sottsass Associati is based in London and Milan and continue to sustain the work, philosophy and culture of the studio.

Ettore Sottsass collaborated with well-known figures in the architecture and design field, including Aldo Cibic, James Irvine, Matteo Thun.

Ettore Sottsass created a vast body of work: furniture, jewelry, ceramics, glass, silver work, lighting, office machine design and buildings.

Design objects and drawings by Ettore Sottsass are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Design Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.