Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Tondo
Ettore Sottsass Italian, born Austria
Il Sestante
Not on view
The tondo (round plate) is part of a collection in enameled copper that Sottsass created for the opening of Il Sestante Gallery in Milan in 1958. Like the ceramic vases from his early career, the plate signal a transition in Sottsass’s practice. The simple geometric patterning and shapes reflect the influence of the Wiener Werkstätte and the Bauhaus, while the infusion of color and the playfulness of the designs are harbingers of his later work. The tondo also reflect his lifelong interest in design as a constructive system of signs and symbols that reference universal, even primal meanings. Here, Sottsass elaborates a few of his most favored elemental human marks: line, circle, grid.
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