Giuseppe Varchetta, ETTORE SOTTSASS – Tornano sempre le primavere, no?, 2013

Happiness and melancholy are the extremes within which all the human and artistic adventure of Ettore Sottsass is placed: happiness of having belonged to a lost yet always present Eden, which is childhood, and at the same time melancholy for not being able to relive it, not being able to stop the time. Giuseppe Varchetta, psychologist and photographer, began photographing Ettore Sottsass in 1978, when the designer was already sixty, and followed him until his last days. In a discreet, attentive, at times intimate story, Varchetta scrutinizes his friend’s face for thirty years and accompanies him in his progressive change, acutely grasping the nuances of his melancholy and, beyond the sadness, his smile.