In the 1920s and 1930s, Brazilian design was dominated by the Art Deco style, which was characterised by a sense of elegance and the use of high-quality materials and geometric shapes. The designs of John Graz and Regina Gomide Graz serve as prime examples here: both attended the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925 – a cornerstone event in terms of the dissemination of Art Deco – and subsequently imported the style to Brazil. Custom-made pieces designed primarily for members of the upper classes would soon give way to simpler, more functional items of furniture, which, in the spirit of the Bauhaus, were manufactured for the general public at a lower cost. With their innovative approaches, Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro, and Lina Bo Bardi contributed significantly to the evolution of modern furniture design in Brazil. They used locally sourced materials and applied traditional craftsmanship. Unilabor constituted both an artistic and a social experiment: the cooperative was co-founded by Geraldo de Barros with the aim of producing modular furniture characterised by simple design and marketed at an affordable price.

Regina Gomide Graz / John Graz

The Swiss-born John Graz and Brazilian Regina Gomide met while studying in Geneva, before relocating to São Paulo together in 1920. It was there that they forged close connections with a number of writers and artists of the avant-garde. The pair exhibited at the Semana de Arte Moderna (Modern Art Week) exhibition in 1922. In 1923, their creative focus shifted to designing entire interior fit-outs, and they collaborated closely with the architect Gregori Warchavchik, who built one of the first modernist houses in Brazil between 1927 and 1928. Their designs were heavily influenced by Art Deco until the 1930s, when they evolved to incorporate a typically Brazilian iconography inspired by the local fauna and flora and Indigenous cultures. Their creations elevated the standing of the applied arts in Brazil, and they might be considered Brazil’s very first interior designers.

Unilabor

In 1954, Geraldo de Barros founded the Unilabor cooperative together with the Dominican priest João Baptista Pereira dos Santos. The project was conceived as both a social and artistic experiment that was intended to be sustainable in all respects. The workshop was a cooperative that was managed by the workers themselves, who were also involved in the company’s decision-making processes. De Barros placed great importance on his workers’ quality of life and sponsored programmes to help increase their education and enhance their health and general sense of well-being. The majority of the furniture produced was designed by de Barros. His objective was to create innovative, high-quality designs that could be manufactured and sold at the lowest possible cost. In the spirit of the Bauhaus and the Ulm School of Design – which was founded in the wake of the Second World War, and with whose co-founders Max Bill and Otl Aicher he was familiar – de Barros strove to bring art and life together. As such, the project constituted one part of a much larger movement that hoped to use modern design as a means of shaping not only Brazil’s economic progress, but also its cultural renewal.