Enamels 1958 by Ettore Sottsass

The years between 1957 and 1961 were crucial for Ettore Sottsass.

It was a prolific period during which his formal language

was brought to a maturity asserted by a firm consciousness.

His enamel works, designed at the end of 1958, belong to this period.

Sottsass’s background – having been educated at the school of rationalism and Jugendstil –

evidently influenced his repertoire of simple geometric patterns, grids,

circles, lines, rectangles – all repeated and organized in sequences governed by colour.

Historically, Sottsass’s architectural use of colour in those years

holds a distinct yet peculiar position.

“Differently from words, colour is not an artificial invention but it is the cosmos itself.

Colour is «attached» to the cosmos, to the nature of our planet”  (E. Sottsass).