On August 17 of this year, at the age of 98, Jorge (Jerzy) Zalszupin, the Warsaw-born Brazilian architect and designer, author of many iconic pieces of furniture, including the elegant Dinamarques armchair, the comfortable Paulistan seat and the Onda bench with its gentle, undulating lines, passed away.
© Victor Affaro
Zalszupin was born in 1922 to a Jewish family, passed his high school diploma in Warsaw in 1939, and after the outbreak of World War II settled in Bucharest, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Institute of Architecture. As he recalls, he longed to become an architect while browsing through a canvas-bound book he bought while still in Warsaw, signed with the initials LC - Le Corbusier.
Dinamarques armchair, 1959
© add
Looking for a safe place to settle down, he chose Brazil, to which he emigrated in 1949. In São Paulo, the architect began working in the design office of Lucjan Korngold, a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology. In Brazil, Zalszupin founded Escritório Téchnico Prumo, where he designed single-family houses and project-matched furniture. In the late 1950s, the designer founded the furniture company L'Atelier, which became a thriving enterprise in just a few years.
Paulistana armchair, 1956-1965
© Jacarandá.Ldn
Zalszupin's work was undoubtedly influenced by the work of Brazilian modernist Oscar Niemeyer, about whom he said in an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza:
I admire his buildings. He designed the beautiful Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro. I liked his designs visually, functionally - less so. Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, Mies van der Rohe, these are not people who liked warm, cozy apartments. They were always more passionate about the outside than the inside. I put more emphasis on the inside.
Onda bench, 1959
© etel.design
