Ettore Sottsass: thirty years of visions in art, design, and experimentation
From March 7 to July 26, 2026, Palazzo Buontalenti in Pistoia will host a major exhibition dedicated to the master of Italian design.
Over 1,400 works, including drawings, objects, photographs, and documentary materials, recount thirty years of research and creative transformations. From March 7 to July 26, 2026, Palazzo Buontalenti in Pistoia will dedicate a large exhibition to Ettore Sottsass, one of the most influential figures in 20th-century design and architecture.
The exhibition focuses on the period from the post-war years to the mid-1970s (1945-1975), crucial years in which Sottsass developed his own language, oscillating between artistic experimentation, existential reflection, and design revolution.
Promoted and organized by the Fondazione Pistoia Musei and the Fondazione Caript, with Electa and Fondamenta – Fondazione per le arti e la cultura, with the main partnership of Intesa Sanpaolo and the collaboration of the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC) of the University of Parma, the exhibition represents an important research project.
Curated by Enrico Morteo, the exhibition follows a predominantly chronological and thematic layout, accompanying visitors through the author’s various creative periods. It begins in the years immediately following the war, when Sottsass used painting and drawing to challenge the codes of rationalist architecture, exploring new relationships between form, matter, and space.
A central section is dedicated to ceramic production and collaboration with the Bitossi factory in Montelupo Fiorentino, where Sottsass reworks the language of contemporary ceramics. In these works, form and color become expressive tools capable of transforming everyday objects into elements laden with symbolic value.
The link with Tuscany continues with the experience of Poltronova in Agliana, where Sottsass took on the role of art director in 1956, creating furniture designs that marked a phase of strong innovation in Italian design.
Ample space is also dedicated to his collaboration with Olivetti, which began in 1957, when Sottsass was responsible for the design of the company’s electronics division, based between Pisa and Massa. Drawings, models, photographs, and documents recount his encounter with the first electronic machines and with a vision of industry in which design, technology, and communication became part of a single cultural system.
A fundamental change in the artist’s creative path took place in the early 1960s, after a trip to India and a serious illness. From that moment on, Sottsass’s work took on a more symbolic and existential character: objects and drawings became tools for reflection on living and the relationship between human beings and the world.
At the end of the 1960s, this research took an even more radical turn. Design became provocation, sensory experience, and a critical gesture towards consumer society, war, and power structures. Sottsass experimented with new forms of communication through drawing and writing, collaborating with magazines such as Casabella and the self-published Pianeta Fresco.
The exhibition concludes with the photographic cycle of Metafore (Metaphors), which marks the transition to a new phase in his career and symbolically opens the next season of the Memphis group, destined to redefine the language of design in the 1980s.
The project is based on materials from the documentary collection entrusted by Sottsass to the CSAC at the University of Parma and is enriched by loans from public and private institutions and collections.
Alongside the exhibition, a comprehensive public program offers events dedicated to music, design, cinema, and culture, as well as guided tours, workshops for families, and inclusive activities also aimed at people with Alzheimer’s and with Italian Sign Language interpretation. The project is completed by a book published by Electa.
📍 Palazzo Buontalenti
Via de’ Rossi 7, Pistoia
🗓 March 7 – July 26, 2026
🕙 Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Special openings: Easter, Easter Monday, April 22, April 25, May 1, June 2 and 3.
