JORGE ZALSZUPIN (1922-2020) ‘Jacaranda’ coffee ...

Hammer

€10,000

JORGE ZALSZUPIN (1922-2020) ‘Jacaranda’ coffee table by Jorge Zalszupin. Brazil, c.1960. With maker's label. 130 × 130 × 28cm (h). Jorge Zalszupin (1922–2020) stands among the great architects/designers of Brazilian modernism, a figure whose work balances sensuous organic form with rigorous structural clarity. Born in Warsaw, he trained in Romania, and arrived in Brazil in the late 1940s, where he founded L’Atelier in 1959 in São Paulo. There he brought together architecture, engineering and artisanal craft to produce furniture of the highest quality: elegant woods (particularly Brazilian rosewood/jacaranda) and was strongly influenced by the Scandinavian designers of the time. Among Zalszupin’s signature pieces, include the Petalas coffee table, first designed around 1959-1962. The Petalas design evokes flower petals, with an octagonal layout composed of petal-like segments. The organic imagery reflects a desire to interpret geometry through nature, a poetic take on structural constraint. The larger version uses eight petals; smaller variants have four. The Petalas table captures many of Zalszupin’s core concerns: minimal ornament, excellence in material, structural innovation, and an approach to modernism that isn’t cold but lyrical. It is considered one of his most iconic works. It also epitomises mid-century Brazilian design’s embrace of local woods and craftsmanship combined with modernist ideals.