From Friday, March 6 to Sunday, July 26, 2026, Palazzo Buontalenti will host a major exhibition dedicated to Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007), painter, graphic designer, photographer, and a central figure in 20th-century Italian design and architecture. The exhibition highlights a body of work that spans the entire century with a critical, disenchanted, yet deeply sensitive perspective on societal change.
Titled I Am an Architect. Ettore Sottsass, the exhibition is built around the extensive collection Sottsass entrusted to CSAC Parma and offers a critical reinterpretation of over thirty years of his work, from the immediate post-war period to the early 1970s.
Special attention is given to his relationship with Tuscany and the artisanal and industrial realities that developed there: from ceramics created with Aldo Londi in Montelupo Fiorentino to collaborations with Sergio Cammilli and Poltronova in Agliana.
Through drawings, photographs, ceramics, objects, and archival documents, many presented for the first time, I Am an Architect traces the evolution of Sottsass’s thinking, which, disillusioned with the society of progress, sought in form, color, and light the possibility of a new humanism in design.
The exhibition is curated by Enrico Morteo, organized by Fondazione Pistoia Musei and Electa, and realized in collaboration with major archives and research centers, including CSAC Parma, Archivio Museo Bitossi, and Centro Studi Poltronova.
