Design for Ettore Sottsass is a dynamic magma of countless technical, intellectual and human skills that produce objects, furniture, living spaces that form an emotional and playful, choral and ironic environment. An eclectic talent between painting and architecture. From the very beginning he was involved in construction, furniture, industrial design, painting, modelling ceramics, designing carpets and glass. In a short article that appeared in “Domus” in September 1959 (no. 358), he commented on a flat he had designed: “The composition of these walls proceeds according to a succession and alternation of different surfaces in a play that is essentially graphic and chromatic (…) The third dimension hardly counts and space is perceived as a rotating succession of planes in two dimensions.
His furniture are sculptures, altars, monoliths that inhabit space with an approach that is as positive and choral as it is experimental. He redefines the sense of inhabiting space with the visionary madness of an artist. His shapes and colours live in harmonious disproportions and the materials seem to live happily, amidst coloured metals and woods, walls in bold colours, pictures and stripes, black and white, in a quest that eludes ephemeral fashions to seek a synthesis that is both evocative and transgressive.
In the next auction of Design and Italian Style to be held in the splendid spaces of Palazzo del Melograno in Genoa, two iconic objects of Sottsass’s creative path between the 1950s and the 1960s will be auctioned. The wall mirror with comb ends, unique in its large size measuring more than two metres high, produced by Santambrogio & De Berti in the 1950s (lot 55, estimate 10. 000 -15,000 euro), and a rare sideboard mod. MS 120 in exotic wood and brass, made by Poltronova circa 1960 (lot 56, estimate 12,000 – 16,000 euro)
Lot 55 | Ettore Sottsass, Specchio da parete. Metallo verniciato, ottone, cristallo specchiato, cristallo colorato specchiato. Produzione Santambrogio & De Berti anni ’50, Stima € 10.000 – 15.000
Lot 55 | Ettore Sottsass, Specchio da parete. (dettaglio). Metallo verniciato, ottone, cristallo specchiato, cristallo colorato specchiato. Produzione Santambrogio & De Berti anni ’50, Stima € 10.000 – 15.000
Lot 56 | Ettore Sottsass, Credenza mod. MS 120. Legno esotico, ottone. Produzione Poltronova 1960 ca., cm 78x125x47. Stima € 12.000 – 16.000
Lot 56 | Ettore Sottsass, Credenza mod. MS 120 (dettaglio) Legno esotico, ottone. Produzione Poltronova 1960 ca., cm 78x125x47. Stima € 12.000 – 16.000
Lot 56 | Ettore Sottsass, Credenza mod. MS 120 (dettaglio) Legno esotico, ottone. Produzione Poltronova 1960 ca., cm 78x125x47. Stima € 12.000 – 16.000