id: 160268
accession number: 1998.149
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1998.149
updated: 2025-02-09 05:28:02.091000
Fruit Bowl, 1982. Ettore Sottsass (Italian, 1917–2007), Memphis Firm (Italian). Silver; diameter: 39.6 cm (15 9/16 in.); open and extended: 29.3 cm (11 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Trideca Society 1998.149
title: Fruit Bowl
title in original language:
series:
series in original language:
creation date: 1982
creation date earliest: 1982
creation date latest: 1982
current location:
creditline: Gift of the Trideca Society
copyright:
---
culture: Italy, Milan
technique: silver
department: Decorative Art and Design
collection: Decorative Arts
type: Silver
find spot:
catalogue raisonne:
---
CREATORS
* Ettore Sottsass (Italian, 1917–2007) - designed by
* Memphis Firm (Italian) - made at
The most recent and best-known of Italian 'new wave' design groups. Founded in 1981 in Milan by Ettore Sottsass with Andrea Branzi, Michele De Iacchi (b. 1951) Matteo Thun (b. 1952) , Marco Zanini (b. 1954), Natalie Du Pasquier (b. 1957) and others. Non-Italians, notably Michael Graves and Hans Hollein, occasionally contributed designs. Anarchic and disruptive, Memphis is both anti-design and anti-ideology, despite much use of structuralist, semiologist and other fashionable jargons in its promotional literature. It flaunts the rejection of 'good form' and 'good taste' with a lavish use of gaudily colored plastic laminates redolent of suburban McDonald's or of nursery foods and sweets. It has been described as the ultimate fruit-salad in design, the 1981 Casablanca cupboard in HPL print laminate by Sottsass being its paradigmatic masterpiece. Besides furniture, the group has produced fabrics, ceramics, silver and glass.
---
measurements: Diameter: 39.6 cm (15 9/16 in.); Open and extended: 29.3 cm (11 9/16 in.)
state of the work:
edition of the work:
support materials:
inscriptions:
---
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art
opening date: 2006-06-09T00:00:00
The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).
---
LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
* {'description': 'MOCA Cleveland (6/9/2006 - 8/20/2006): "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art", no. 120, p. 123, repr. p. 89.', 'opening_date': '2006-06-09T00:00:00'}
---
PROVENANCE
---
fun fact:
digital description:
wall description:
---
RELATED WORKS
---
CITATIONS
Cleveland Museum of Art, “Cleveland Acquires Major New Sculpture, Rare Chinese Prints, Contemporary Prints, Drawings & Photographs,” October 30, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
page number:
url: https://archive.org/details/cmapr4215
Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006.
page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 89, no. 120
url:
---
IMAGES