Jorge Zalszupin

Lifetime

1922–2020

Country

Brazil

Jerzy (Jorge) Zalszupin was born on 1 June 1922 in Warsaw, into a Jewish family. He completed secondary school in 1939 and, after the outbreak of war, found himself in Bucharest, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Institute of Architecture. In 1949, he emigrated to Brazil.

In São Paulo, he worked in the office of architect Lucjan Korngold – together they designed, among other projects, Edifício Mendes Caldeira (1960). He then established Escritório Técnico Prumo, designing single-family houses together with matching furniture. In 1959, he founded L'Atelier in São Paulo, one of the first furniture factories in Brazil to produce furniture in series. The Dinamarquesa armchair and Onda bench date from 1959. He designed furniture for the Federal Supreme Court (1960), including judges’ armchairs; Oscar Niemeyer incorporated his designs into the interiors of Palácio da Alvorada and Palácio do Planalto in Brasília.

As an architect, he also designed buildings in São Paulo, including Edifício Grande São Paulo (1971), Torre Paulista (1972) and Shopping Ibirapuera (1975). From 2000, his furniture was reissued by the Etel Carmona studio, and in 2008 – after a break of more than 40 years – he designed the Veronica armchair. His autobiography was published in 2014. He died on 17 August 2020 in São Paulo.