Design, light, and spirituality. Ettore Sottsass on display.

For two more days, until July 26, Studio Casoli pays tribute to Ettore Sottsass, a key figure in 20th-century design, with an exhibition that traces his poetic and spiritual vision of the object. Architect, artist, and radical thinker, Sottsass transformed design into a symbolic and sensitive act, capable of narrating inner and collective worlds.

The house on the island and the southern light

In the evocative setting of Filicudi, where Sottsass spent summers with his partner Barbara Radice, matter merges with light, and architecture is reduced to the essential. It is no coincidence that it is from this place - a rugged and poetic island - that the common thread of the exhibition unfolds. The selected works, from the 1960s onwards, convey the value of silence, spirituality, and the emotional memory of things. "Light also tells the story of architecture," wrote Sottsass: and in the exhibition, light becomes a metaphor, a guardian of stories and atmospheres.

Objects as rites, furniture as totems

The ceramics and glassware, exhibited at Studio Cascoli, evoke primitive geometries, archetypes that engage with an ancestral and ritual dimension. Icons like Torno Subito (Superbox) from 1966, a tower of plastic laminate designed for Poltronova, or the Tartar table for Memphis from 1985, showcase the radical soul of Italian design. Furniture that is no longer functional tools, but symbols: domestic totems, bearers of meaning.
The photographs on display amplify this vision, capturing details of minimal architectures, stones, and glimpses illuminated by flashes of light.

A vision that transcends form

For Sottsass, the creative act has always been a spiritual gesture. Design, far from pure utility, becomes a language to inhabit time poetically. His explorations in India, contact with mandalas and yantras, have nourished an imagery that embraces color, symbol, myth. A way of thinking that escapes the logic of the market and embraces the complexity of human existence.
As he wrote himself: lighting a candle or arranging a stone are gestures that touch the sacred.

An inheritance without borders

Born in Innsbruck in 1917, Sottsass graduated in architecture in Turin and opened his own studio in Milan. With Olivetti, he designed revolutionary pieces such as the Elea 9003 and the Valentine typewriter, bright red like an object of affection. In 1981, he founded the Memphis group, forever revolutionizing the language of design. His works are now exhibited in the most important museums in the world, from Paris to New York, from London to Amsterdam. This exhibition at Studio Casoli gives back his most intimate voice: that of a man who knew how to combine rigor and spirituality, form and narrative.

Design, light, and spirituality. Ettore Sottsass on display.

The house on the island and the southern light

Objects as rites, furniture as totems

A vision that transcends form

An inheritance without borders

Gallery