Yesterday, we all awoke to some sad news: Ettore Sottsass, the dean and guru of Italian design, died as 2007 was coming to an end.

At the very time President Napolitano was giving his final year’s address to the Italian people, appealing to the Italian creativity, Sottsass passed away, and with him one of our greatest contemporary creative talents, an all round talent who was able to test himself constantly with modernity, to recreate himself and to be able to pit his wits against the greatest talents of the new generation. As were, at different times, Michele De Lucchi, Andrea Branzi, Matteo Thun and Aldo Cibic, to name but a few of the main “sons” of Sottsass.

We are pleased to remember that ceramic was one of the main materials Sottsass used to express himself: so, in this sense, it is worth remembering the longstanding partnership he had with Bitossi in the ‘50s and ‘60s, geared especially towards the creation of the vases and design pieces, that launched him towards the very summit of Italian design.

The links below may be of interest:

• Sottsass’s profile on Wikipedia and Design Addict
• A gallery of his work on Flickr
• Three interviews for Panorama, Rai Educational and Archimagazine
• The exhibition to celebrate his 90th birthday, Vorrei Sapere Perché, in Trieste, which runs until March 2008; and, less we forget, Ettore Sottsass - Work In Progress, held in London last Spring and which is the subject of the video at the start of the post, and the Design Museum at the Triennale in Milan
• The first reactions to the news of his death by some Italian bloggers: Designerblog, Designbuzz, Alfonso Fuggetta, Aurelio Valesi, Design Blog Sociale.

Pubblicato il 2 January 2008 da Alberto in Real-life Projects | |