Zara Chairs

Gustavo Dias is a Brazilian artist and designer, born in 1978, in São Paulo, Brazil. He was fortunate to have spent his childhood between his uncle’s farm, where he developed an interest for nature and the city, which allowed him the freedom to put his creativity into play, by building skateboard ramps on the streets. From an early age, he and his sisters, both artists, were taught by their parents to be creative and always find ways to express themselves through art.

Gustavo was heavily influenced by his father, who despite a business degree, was always engaged in artistic activities, using his spare time in painting, building furniture and developing other skills. Despite these influences, it wasn’t until later, at the age of 16 years, that Gustavo had his very first contact with sculpture, woodcarving and other techniques, while attending an exchange student program in the US. Since then, his creative endeavors went from studying marketing, cinema and sculpture, to finally grounding his passion for design in nature, by choosing wood as the main source of inspiration for his art and design. He opened his first workshop in 2006, where objects and furniture are shaped by hand, assembled with traditional techniques and combined with improvisations that allow him to go from early sketches to final products in a combination of form and function, belief and art.

Organic modern furniture is characterized by clean lines, an overall uncomplicated aesthetic and a prioritizing of natural, sustainable materials, such as wood and stone. There are lots of earth tones and natural-world textures rather than bright color palettes or fabrics embellished with busy patterns.

Organic furniture is minimalist and, owing to the ideas of venerable architect Frank Lloyd Wright, designed for warm spaces that promote harmony between human habitation and the great outdoors. Organic modern design, including in furniture and architecture, emerged in the 1930s.

Designers such as Andrianna Shamaris, Alguacil & Perkoff and Jörg Pietschmann — all known for organic modern design — have created furniture that brings dynamic and unpredictable energy to home interiors while emphasizing the importance of a relationship with the natural world.

Striking an appealing balance between our living spaces and nature doesn't have to be an arduous task — the broad selection of original organic modern furniture on 1stDibs includes solid wood tables, bamboo seating options, hand-knotted wall tapestries and more.

More often than not, vintage mid-century Brazilian furniture designs, with their gleaming wood, soft leathers and inviting shapes, share a sensuous, unique quality that distinguishes them from the more rectilinear output of American and Scandinavian makers of the same era.

Commencing in the 1940s and '50s, a group of architects and designers transformed the local cultural landscape in Brazil, merging the modernist vernacular popular in Europe and the United States with the South American country's traditional techniques and indigenous materials.

Key mid-century influencers on Brazilian furniture design include natives Oscar Niemeyer, Sergio Rodrigues and José Zanine Caldas as well as such European immigrants as Joaquim Tenreiro, Jean Gillon and Jorge Zalszupin. These creators frequently collaborated; for instance, Niemeyer, an internationally acclaimed architect, commissioned many of them to furnish his residential and institutional buildings.

The popularity of Brazilian modern furniture has made household names of these designers and other greats. Their particular brand of modernism is characterized by an émigré point of view (some were Lithuanian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, and Italian), a preference for highly figured indigenous Brazilian woods, a reverence for nature as an inspiration and an atelier or small-production mentality.

Hallmarks of Brazilian mid-century design include smooth, sculptural forms and the use of native woods like rosewood, jacaranda and pequi. The work of designers today exhibits many of the same qualities, though with a marked interest in exploring new materials (witness the Campana Brothers' stuffed-animal chairs) and an emphasis on looking inward rather than to other countries for inspiration.

Find a collection of vintage Brazilian furniture on 1stDibs that includes chairs, sofas, tables and more.