Ettore Sottsass: There is a Planet. Exhibition Catalogue. Triennale Design Museum.

Marking the centenary of the birth of Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck 1917–2007 Milan), the Triennale Design Museum is presenting a monographic exhibition devoted to him in the spaces of the Galleria dell’Architettura. It will be accompanied by a book and a catalogue. The title of the exhibition, and of the book, “There is a Planet”, is that of a project that Sottsass started in the 1990s for the German publisher Wasmuth, but never completed. The project for the book, now published by Electa, was to form five groups of photographs taken by Sottsass on his travels around the world, each with its own title and essay. The photos would be of architecture, houses, doors, people and situations involving dwellings and, in more general terms, the presence of humans on the planet.

The main body of the exhibition, which extends across nine rooms, revolves around nine themes, based on an analysis of the archive volumes of Sottsass’s writings. Each theme/room and group of works is accompanied by brief quotations from his writings, thus closely following the journey of his endeavours and of his wide-ranging, eclectic activities: architecture, drawing, design, photography, painting, objects, furniture, sculptures, glassware, ceramics, publishing, and writings.

The names of the themes are taken from the titles of writings, objects or works selected as the linchpin-names around which one can imagine Sottsass’s work being organised. These are not precise periods of time, even though they do vaguely coincide with some dates, but rather of moods and trends that crowd together and fade one into the other, linking up to those before and after. Along the walls of the Gallery that gives access to the rooms, there are works of the same period as those in the rooms on one side, and on the other a selection of photographs behind the great master’s design. A series of previously un-exhibited photographs from the early 1960s, called The Girls of Antibes, will also be on display.

'To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, 1917 - Milan, 2007), the Triennale Design Museum, upon the suggestion of Barbara Radice, is publishing a previously unseen project on which Sottsass worked in collaboration with Nanae Umeda in the 1990s for the German publisher Wasmuth. Taken by Sottsass during his travels around the world, the photographs are of architecture, houses, doors, people, things and situations involving dwellings and, in more general terms, the presence of humans on the planet. Sottsass’s plan was to arrange these images in five groups, with five different titles and each with its own essay, but the book was unfortunately never made and the project never completed. The Triennale Design Museum is now presenting it again, in the conviction that it offers further insight into the originality and radicalism of Ettore Sottsass’s view of the world. ' – Silvana Annicchiarico / Triennale Design Museum Director

Pages: 131
Dimensions: 235 × 324 mm
Format: Softcover
Language: English
Year: 2017
Publisher: Electa