Sottsass: opere grafiche

Through the presentation of posters, lithographs, magazines and watercolours, the exhibition at Galerie Essere highlights the polymorphic nature of the work of Ettore Sottsass.

Suzette Ricciotti and Ivan Mietton present “Opere grafiche”, a retrospective of works on paper by the Italian architect Ettore Sottsass.

View of the exhibition “Ettore Sottsass: Opere grafiche” at Galerie Essere, Paris

Through the presentation of many original signed works, the exhibition highlights the polymorphic nature of the work of Ettore Sottsass, who during his long career, seized all possible media forms: posters, lithographs, melamine, laminate, linoleum, magazines and watercolours.

Several very rare copies of the magazine Pianeta Fresco (1967-1968), a true hymn of love created together with his first wife Fernanda Pivano, are displayed alongside the original lithographs from the series Pianeta come Festival or Indian Memory (1972), which was seen as a glimpse into mystical and erotic architecture under chemical influence.

Lithographs of large format furniture made as a limited series in 2002, as well as watercolours of architecture from the series Architettura Attenuata produced in 2003, show how the artist drew works of art without any specific context. His Attenuated Architecture consists of axonometric projections showing both sides of a volume on a grey stone pavement. The building is dark, hard and lacks a specific function, except that of being monumental architecture.

The work of Ettore Sottsass, as an industrial designer, is also showcased by the floor of the gallery made of laminate panels by the Italian firm Abet Laminati from 1964 to 2000. The exposition is part of a cycle of exhibitions, bringing together several great masters of Italian design as well as the young French designers.