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Lot Essay
Unique totem n°2, Menhir della Vita (Ai Capelloni Nomadi, Irriverenti e Senza Programmi)
In the autumn of 1961, Ettore Sottsass discovered India with his wife, Fernanda Pivano. This trip was decisive. The discovery of a new way of life, far from what he knew in Milan, completely overwhelmed the architect who was impressed by this very ancient, sophisticated and highly sensorial culture. The colors, the scents, the relationship to life and death, were for Sottsass a mental experience perceived as "a matrix journey".
By the end of ‘62, Sottsass contracted severe nephritis and, with the support of Roberto Olivetti, he travelled to the United States to receive treatment. During his hospitalization at the hospital in Palo Alto, and under the influence of numerous prescription drugs for healing, he conceived, at night, the Ceramiche delle Tenebre (1963), the Ceramiche di Shiva (1964), as well as the series of Totems called Ceramiche Sbagliate (1965).
It was during his recovery in California that Sottsass discovered the American way of life, the consumer culture and Pop Art. Through Fernanda Pivano, who was working as a translator, he met, the American counter-culture writers: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burrough. The Beat Generation authors rejected mainstream culture, experimented with new drugs, advocated for alternative forms of sexuality, all of which took place under the influence of eastern spirituality. Simply put, an escape towards an artificially fabricated elsewhere.
These physical and cultural shocks led Sottsass to completely rethink his way of artistic expression. He became increasingly interested in the sensorial qualities of color and materials, and developed a formal aesthetic language which he would remain faithful to for the rest of his career. His designs are based on simple geometric forms with graphic and primitive signs. The figures refers, according to him, to “the great cosmic revolutions in which human life is a fragment.” Color, used systematically in his work from now on, allows “the release of positive energies, the vital, even therapeutic energies”.
The richness and originality of Ettore Sottsass' production in the 1960s is the result of all these physical, social, and cultural factors combined. It was these experimental years that allowed him to lay the creative foundations that made him a major player in the radical Italian movements that would become Alchimia, which Sottsass joined in 1979, and Memphis, which he founded in 1980.
As the most emblematic piece of Ettore Sottsass' production, the ceramic totem is the symbiosis of all the influences that he traversed during the 1960s.
Initially designed, at night in his hospital room, as a column made up of juxtaposed medicine pills, the architect quickly imagined a multiple production of around twenty different models that could function independently or in groups:
I thought of making large colored columns, more than two meters high, obtained by producing colored ceramic rings on top of each other. The columns were grouped in groups of two, three or four and formed strange architectures, perhaps even small temples. E.S.
To produce these important pieces, Sottsass used the Bitossi workshop located in the village of Montelupo Fiorentino, near Florence in Tuscany. He made numerous preparatory drawings with precise instructions for the artisans. A final design drawing, made in scale 1:1, was produced for validation before beginning production. To follow the latter, Ettore Sottsass and Fernanda Pivano traveled between Milan and Montelupo every weekend in a Fiat 500.
He made big colorful blocks, so big I never got to see them put together. On the highway, he told me about the giant shirts of Oldenburg, giant Liechtenstein comic strips, giant Warhol flowers, and the curious process of exaggeration in our time. F.P.
Sottsass was very aware of contemporary American culture and particularly the Pop artists he admired. It is therefore not surprising that he met the art dealer Gian Enzo Sperone, who presented the work of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Roy Lichtenstein in Italy.
The Galleria Sperone in Milan hosted the exhibition Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants & Gas Pumps. The exhibition poster, designed by Ettore Sottsass, listed the twenty-one pieces that made up this totemic environment. Each totem bears a number and a name with political (Urna troppo chic per le ceneri dei partiti politici), poetic (Menhir della Vita, Stupa del firmamento, dedicato ai poeti) or sexual (Grande vaso afrodisiaco) emphasis. The show opened on April 19, 1967, Via Bigli 24 in Milan.
In addition to Gio Ponti, who came to the opening, "a whole underclass of poets, singers and artists with long hair came (...)" recalled Ettore Sottsass. “With these guys, Fernanda and I edited a magazine called Pianeta Fresco, a title suggested by Allen Ginsberg.”
Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants & Gas Pumps was then reprised a few months later, in Genoa, at the Galleria La Bertesca, then at the Poltronova showroom in Agliana near Florence, in an exhibition entitled Ceramiche Sbagliate.
The totems were then exhibited at the first Ettore Sottsass retrospective in 1994 at the Center Pompidou in Paris. In 2017, the Menhir della Vita totem was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, then at the ICA Miami in 2019.
This unique piece is a masterpiece by Ettore Sottsass. Composed of twenty circular elements in colored glazed ceramic, this column is probably one of the most poetic of the group of twenty-one pieces. Menhir della Vita is an emblem, a symbol of a sacred force which is dedicated to life. The continuous gradation of colors, which is only interrupted by three colored elements, hatched with white stripes, gives it a delicate, and simultaneously, extremely sophisticated appearance.
Sottsass added a white wooden plinth in order to separate his work from the ground, giving it greater importance.
These ceramics (...) are a bit of a bet, a bit of a conversation between me and this love which becomes clearer and grows with time, the love of life, the love of people who live all over the world, who travel in a hundred thousand trains from Palermo to Monaco, who try every day to defend their lives and who every day sees them destroyed by fate, abuse and violence. E.S.
Ivan Mietton is a former curator in the Design department of the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 2002 to 2005. He has contributed to major exhibitions such as Ettore Sottsass, 20 years of Design for Olivetti and Charlotte Perriand. He is the author of Sottsass & Poltronova 1958-1974, Skira, Paris 2022
In the autumn of 1961, Ettore Sottsass discovered India with his wife, Fernanda Pivano. This trip was decisive. The discovery of a new way of life, far from what he knew in Milan, completely overwhelmed the architect who was impressed by this very ancient, sophisticated and highly sensorial culture. The colors, the scents, the relationship to life and death, were for Sottsass a mental experience perceived as "a matrix journey".
By the end of ‘62, Sottsass contracted severe nephritis and, with the support of Roberto Olivetti, he travelled to the United States to receive treatment. During his hospitalization at the hospital in Palo Alto, and under the influence of numerous prescription drugs for healing, he conceived, at night, the Ceramiche delle Tenebre (1963), the Ceramiche di Shiva (1964), as well as the series of Totems called Ceramiche Sbagliate (1965).
It was during his recovery in California that Sottsass discovered the American way of life, the consumer culture and Pop Art. Through Fernanda Pivano, who was working as a translator, he met, the American counter-culture writers: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burrough. The Beat Generation authors rejected mainstream culture, experimented with new drugs, advocated for alternative forms of sexuality, all of which took place under the influence of eastern spirituality. Simply put, an escape towards an artificially fabricated elsewhere.
These physical and cultural shocks led Sottsass to completely rethink his way of artistic expression. He became increasingly interested in the sensorial qualities of color and materials, and developed a formal aesthetic language which he would remain faithful to for the rest of his career. His designs are based on simple geometric forms with graphic and primitive signs. The figures refers, according to him, to “the great cosmic revolutions in which human life is a fragment.” Color, used systematically in his work from now on, allows “the release of positive energies, the vital, even therapeutic energies”.
The richness and originality of Ettore Sottsass' production in the 1960s is the result of all these physical, social, and cultural factors combined. It was these experimental years that allowed him to lay the creative foundations that made him a major player in the radical Italian movements that would become Alchimia, which Sottsass joined in 1979, and Memphis, which he founded in 1980.
As the most emblematic piece of Ettore Sottsass' production, the ceramic totem is the symbiosis of all the influences that he traversed during the 1960s.
Initially designed, at night in his hospital room, as a column made up of juxtaposed medicine pills, the architect quickly imagined a multiple production of around twenty different models that could function independently or in groups:
I thought of making large colored columns, more than two meters high, obtained by producing colored ceramic rings on top of each other. The columns were grouped in groups of two, three or four and formed strange architectures, perhaps even small temples. E.S.
To produce these important pieces, Sottsass used the Bitossi workshop located in the village of Montelupo Fiorentino, near Florence in Tuscany. He made numerous preparatory drawings with precise instructions for the artisans. A final design drawing, made in scale 1:1, was produced for validation before beginning production. To follow the latter, Ettore Sottsass and Fernanda Pivano traveled between Milan and Montelupo every weekend in a Fiat 500.
He made big colorful blocks, so big I never got to see them put together. On the highway, he told me about the giant shirts of Oldenburg, giant Liechtenstein comic strips, giant Warhol flowers, and the curious process of exaggeration in our time. F.P.
Sottsass was very aware of contemporary American culture and particularly the Pop artists he admired. It is therefore not surprising that he met the art dealer Gian Enzo Sperone, who presented the work of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Roy Lichtenstein in Italy.
The Galleria Sperone in Milan hosted the exhibition Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants & Gas Pumps. The exhibition poster, designed by Ettore Sottsass, listed the twenty-one pieces that made up this totemic environment. Each totem bears a number and a name with political (Urna troppo chic per le ceneri dei partiti politici), poetic (Menhir della Vita, Stupa del firmamento, dedicato ai poeti) or sexual (Grande vaso afrodisiaco) emphasis. The show opened on April 19, 1967, Via Bigli 24 in Milan.
In addition to Gio Ponti, who came to the opening, "a whole underclass of poets, singers and artists with long hair came (...)" recalled Ettore Sottsass. “With these guys, Fernanda and I edited a magazine called Pianeta Fresco, a title suggested by Allen Ginsberg.”
Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants & Gas Pumps was then reprised a few months later, in Genoa, at the Galleria La Bertesca, then at the Poltronova showroom in Agliana near Florence, in an exhibition entitled Ceramiche Sbagliate.
The totems were then exhibited at the first Ettore Sottsass retrospective in 1994 at the Center Pompidou in Paris. In 2017, the Menhir della Vita totem was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, then at the ICA Miami in 2019.
This unique piece is a masterpiece by Ettore Sottsass. Composed of twenty circular elements in colored glazed ceramic, this column is probably one of the most poetic of the group of twenty-one pieces. Menhir della Vita is an emblem, a symbol of a sacred force which is dedicated to life. The continuous gradation of colors, which is only interrupted by three colored elements, hatched with white stripes, gives it a delicate, and simultaneously, extremely sophisticated appearance.
Sottsass added a white wooden plinth in order to separate his work from the ground, giving it greater importance.
These ceramics (...) are a bit of a bet, a bit of a conversation between me and this love which becomes clearer and grows with time, the love of life, the love of people who live all over the world, who travel in a hundred thousand trains from Palermo to Monaco, who try every day to defend their lives and who every day sees them destroyed by fate, abuse and violence. E.S.
Ivan Mietton is a former curator in the Design department of the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 2002 to 2005. He has contributed to major exhibitions such as Ettore Sottsass, 20 years of Design for Olivetti and Charlotte Perriand. He is the author of Sottsass & Poltronova 1958-1974, Skira, Paris 2022