Bold Legacy of the Memphis Group

Ever wonder what sparked a colorful rebellion against the stark minimalism of the 1980s design world? Enter the Memphis Group, a collective of visionary creatives led by Ettore Sottsass. Their bold, eclectic designs introduced a vibrant new aesthetic that challenged conventional norms and left a lasting impact. Uncover the tale of this groundbreaking movement and see how it painted a new, dynamic picture in modern design.

Ever wonder where the Memphis design movement got its name? It was less about the Tennessee city and more about the musicians it influenced. The man behind the movement, the late Ettore Sottsass, named it after the Bob Dylan song, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”—a song that was playing throughout the first meeting of what would become the Memphis Group in late 1980. 

Working as an architect and designer in Italy, the Austrian-born Sottsass founded what he termed “the new international style” as a reaction to the stark, monochrome, and mass-produced modern designs of the 1970s he saw as lacking in individual style and personality.

Before Memphis, Sottsass was part of the radical design and anti-design movements in Italy, making work that challenged traditional design principles and the government. Riffing off varied sources of inspiration—Otto Wagner’s Steinhof Church in Vienna, Austria; Bauhaus design; pop art; Buddhist mandalas; futuristic set design in Stanley Kubrick’s film, “2001: A Space Odyssey”; Native American Katsina dolls; puja trays used in offerings to Shiva; artists like Donald Judd and Frank Lloyd Wright—Sottsass was a prolific artist in several mediums throughout his six decades-long career.

First a painter and illustrator, he also worked in ceramics, jewelry design, domestic landscape design, fabric design, architecture, furniture design, and industrial design (including his iconic Olivetti Valentine portable typewriter that he labored over for nearly a decade). The artist favored a minimalist approach to living, and this is apparent in his vision for a contemporary utopia in which all of life’s necessities could be held in what he conceived of as communal “Superboxes.”

In 1981, the Memphis group emerged—including members Alessandro Mendini, Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi, Aldo Cibic, Michele de Lucchi, Nathalie du Pasquier, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata, Matteo Thun, Javier Mariscal, Luciano Paccagnella, George Sowden, Marco Zanini, and the journalist Barbara Radice—with Sottsass at its center. The movement was marked by energy and flamboyant splashes of color, revolutionizing the staid aesthetic of “good design” at the time. Inspired by 1950s kitsch, art deco, and pop art, they created and exhibited furniture and objects annually through 1988, when the group essentially disbanded.

During the movement’s formation, Sottsass concurrently assembled the design consultancy Sottsass Associati, which is still in operation in London and Milan and continues to “sustain the work, philosophy, and culture of the studio” as an architectural design firm, furniture, exhibition, and showroom designer. 

Though misunderstood by some designers at the time, the Memphis movement left a solid imprint on the development of postmodernist design principles, and it’s making appearances in recent exhibitions and clothing lines, such as Nathalie du Pasquier’s 2014 line for American Apparel and the recent exhibition, “Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical,” at the Met Breuer in New York City. In a San Francisco Chronicle article, Bertrand Pellegrin quite accurately sums up the movement as a “shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price.” We’ll take it.

Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) was an Italian architect, designer, and artist. His body of work included furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting, home objects, voice machine design—specifically the Valentine typewriter commissioned by Olivetti—and various buildings and interiors. He was the founder of the iconic radical design group Memphis.

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