Eldens

Polarising critics when they burst onto the design scene in 1981, the Memphis Group’s designs channeled all the busy, eclectic exuberance of the postmodern Eighties. Having slipped under the radar of all but a few collectors for years, their work has recently come to the attention of the design world again.

It’s impossible not to respond to the furniture of the 1980s design collective, the Memphis Group. An encounter with their designs gives the viewer an exciting jolt, and shakes loose all manner of adjectives and descriptions: bold, rule-breaking, energetic, radical, provocative.

You can see why critics were divided. Their work was a deliberate break with the calm, understated taste of midcentury designs. Primary colours jostle with neon, pastels, and tangy yellows, oranges and blues; surfaces pulse with bold black and white patterns of squiggles or thick stripes. Armchairs are built up of geometric shapes, uprights tilt. Plastic laminate was a favoured material at the time and the Group adopted it with gusto.

Founded in 1981, the Milan-based Memphis Group was a collective of young designers from different countries, led by the veteran architect and designer, Ettore Sottsass. The name itself is arbitrary – derived from a Bob Dylan song which happened to be playing during an initial meeting in Sottsass’s apartment. Despite generating a buzz from its early years, the collective’s commercial sales were modest. But by the time the group disbanded in 1988, their influence had permeated popular culture, with their style filtering into set designs for film and TV shows.

Despite the mixed reception, the Memphis Group captured the interest of figures such as David Bowie and Karl Lagerfeld, both of whom became collectors of their work. And in recent years, the Memphis Group’s style has come back into visibility. It strutted its way onto the catwalk, in Dior’s 2011 haute couture collection, and in Missoni’s 2015 ready-to-wear winter collection. In 2016, the posthumous sale of Bowie’s art at Sotheby’s featured his extensive collection of Memphis artefacts.

The group has also received institutional recognition, with major exhibitions at London’s Design Museum in 2014, and Vitra Design Museum in Germany in 2021. Ettore Sottsass was given a major retrospective at The Met Breuer in New York in 2017, and what he called the “pure and vital energy” of his designs continues to be felt today. Their signature style is imprinted on our cultural memory: when we picture the 80s, we can’t help but see the neon colours and geometric shapes of the Memphis Group.