Ettore Sottsass

Welcome to Who Art Ed?, weekly art history for all ages.

I'm your host Kyle Wood, and today we're looking at Ettore Sottsass and Memphis Design, the movement that made the 1980s and '90s look so rad.

Now, Ettore Sottsass was born September 14th, 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria.

His mother, Antonia, was Austrian, and his father, also named Ettore Sottsass, was an accomplished Italian architect.

He grew up in a household filled with blueprints, drafting paper, and construction talk.

And while many people growing up and going into the family business might feel pressure to uphold traditions, young Ettore set out to flip the design world completely upside down.

Rated PG 13.

Welcome back.

And we're working, you know, this is, we're all within right now, the sort of streamlined era.

And they would eventually go on to create The, what would become, I think it would be Ettore Sottsass who would later be hired by Olivetti, who would basically design the ethos of the Olivetti brand.

And then Elia Noyes would come on in.

IBM, because he would go on to redesign the IBM Model 1, the Model A electric typewriter, and then eventually the Selectric.