Joaquim Tenreiro is considered a pioneer of modern Brazilian furniture. His mastery of wood is undeniable, as well as the combination of sensitivity, constructive rigor and impeccable workmanship represented by his artist, designer and artisan facets, respectively. There are numerous commentators on his work, particularly from design.

In this exhibition, furniture, sculptures, paintings, tapestries and reliefs, in addition to sketches, made in different periods, inhabit the living spaces of Casa Zalszupin, and, in doing so, shed light on other possible interpretative prisms about this production. The reliefs from the 1970s stand out, whose chromatic power and geometry provide rhythm to the curatorial narrative.

By its very nature, relief adheres to architecture; it is appendix, ornament. These are works by a visual artist Tenreiro, in a period of abandonment of furniture design. In wood, iron or duratex, ribbons and trellises – their fullness and emptiness, shadows and lights – they are presented through repetition, but they operate through difference.

They coincide temporally with the resumption of geometric abstractions, in Brazil and abroad. Former concretists recovered geometric research, combining them with chromatic palettes disseminated by Pop Art, dialoguing with Op Art visual effects and stimulated by minimalist structures, not always aware of this information. In this place were Judith Lauand, Luiz Sacilotto, Lothar Charoux, Mauricio Nogueira Lima, Franz Weissmann, among others, working between the 1970s and 1980s.

Tenreiro’s reliefs and abstract sculptures were highlighted in criticism that emphasised the constructive order of this production and its historical labor. Analytical seams associated the sinuous forms with those of baroque churches, referring them also to the wooden carvings of altars of Portuguese heritage.

Coming from an intellectualized act by the practice itself, Tenreiro’s production stem from a relationship with history and with the local artistic environment that welcomes him. Like the furniture of a designer who does not join the pattern of industrial serialization – the Poltrona Leve, the three-legged chair -, his reliefs retain an intuitive geometry that subverts the rigidity of a system. In this way, they constitute an uncomfortable counterpoint to a constructive mechanistic conception. They are unique, singular, sculptural.

Ana Avelar – Curator