Memphis Design
The Milan design collective of the 1980s whose loud laminates, clashing patterns and toy-like shapes mocked modernist good taste.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Memphis Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Memphis made its public debut in Milan in September 1981, with furniture that looked like stacked toys covered in printed plastic. Ettore Sottsass led a younger circle including Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Martine Bedin and Peter Shire, with contributions from Shiro Kuramata, Hans Hollein and Arata Isozaki. The group grew out of Italy's radical design scene of the 1970s, including Studio Alchimia, where Alessandro Mendini had covered a reproduction 18th-century armchair in painted dots for his Proust armchair (1978).
Look for decorative laminates used as if they were luxury veneers, lopsided bookcases like Sottsass's Carlton (1981), terrazzo, candy and primary colours, and legs shaped like cones or balls. Du Pasquier's squiggles and Sottsass's Bacterio print became its graphic signature. Sottsass withdrew in 1985 and the group soon wound down, but its humour shaped 1980s graphics and fashion and has been revived repeatedly since the 2010s.
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