Cadeira de Três Pés (Three-Legged Chair)

Joaquim Tenreiro Cadeira de Três Pés (Three-Legged Chair)

Price on request

Historical Design
1947
Imbuia, Peroba, Pau-Marfim, Roxinho and Mogno Wood

Of all Joachim Tenreiro’s sculptural designs, the Cadeira Tres Pes (Three-Legged Chair) is the most acclaimed. Designed circa 1947, he developed various delineations of this model, using between two to five different inlaid wooden strips. This chair presents five different Brazilian woods inlaid together, undoubtedly the most technically difficult of all the variations. Here Tenreiro’s use of colour becomes a central concept in his design.

The chair reveals the extent of his knowledge of local Brazilian hardwoods and their technical possibilities. The woods Tenreiro chose were particularly dense, and therefore tough to work with. His ability to craft these unyielding materials with such precision and attention to detail is what cemented his reputation as a master designer and craftsman.

Tenreiro was particularly attentive to proportions that would provide optimal comfort, using curved lines that would accommodate the human body. Refuting the sharp and rigid lines of European modernism, he created a new visual language balancing modernism with tradition. The Three-Legged Chair, with its rhythmic ornament and curved shape, is the embodiment of Tenreiro’s research.

The chair was never directly commercialised, but offered by Tenreiro to private clients. Very soon after its creation, this chair was exhibited in preeminent venues, including in the National Modern Art Salon in Rio in 1961.

Literature:

M. C. Loschiavo Dos Santos, Bolsa de Arte (ed.), Tenreiro, Rio de Janeiro 1998, p. 57, 76, 77.

Artist Biography

Joaquim Tenreiro (1906-1992) is often referred to as the father of Brazilian modernism. The furniture designer was born in Portugal and moved to Rio de Janeiro in the late 1920s. In 1941, he received a commission to create furniture for a home designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the writer Francisco Inácio Peixoto. He designed modern furniture that fit the Brazilian style of life, often using native woods. He continued designing furniture until the late 1960s, when he then devoted himself to painting and sculpture.