Lucas Simões Reimagines Brazilian Modernism in a Cross-Generational Show

Brazil’s modern design movement gained momentum in the 1940s and ’50s as a generation of designers rejected the ornamental excesses of imported European styles. Without ready access to new tools and technologies afforded by industrialization, the country’s designers often crafted furniture by hand using local materials. In Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, luminaries like José Zanine Caldas, Sergio Rodrigues, Jorge Zalszupin, and Joaquim Tenreiro helped shape a national design vocabulary characterized by organic shapes, rhythmic curves, and native hardwoods like jacaranda and peroba that lent the pieces an earthy allure. Tenreiro, born in Portugal and trained as a cabinetmaker, introduced elegant furniture that responded to Brazil’s climate and culture, replacing heavy carved forms with airy silhouettes. His works—cane-backed chairs, tapered rosewood settees, and gracefully curved dining tables—prioritized structure over embellishment, giving grain and joinery room to breathe.

While Tenreiro helped shape Brazil’s design vernacular, a new exhibition explores how today’s artists are reinterpreting that legacy. Curated by gallerist Ulysses de Santi, “Lightness & Tension” at Christie’s Los Angeles juxtaposes key midcentury furnishings by Tenreiro with contemporary Brazilian artist Lucas Simões’ debut furniture collection, a radical ensemble of glinting metal pieces that intentionally depart from the legacy set by his forebears. 

The stylistic whiplash immediately captivated de Santi, a Brazilian actor-turned-gallerist and design scholar who has quietly established himself as a trusted authority on Brazilian modernism through rigorously curated exhibitions. Most recently, he teamed with Sean Kelly Gallery to celebrate Jorge Zalszupin’s centennial with an exhibition of his rare hardwood pieces and hosted a pop-up of iconic Brazilian modernist furnishings with Frieze in London. He hadn’t planned to relaunch his nomadic gallery, but a routine visit to Simões’ studio in São Paulo proved to be a revelation. The stark contrast between the young talent’s off-balance metallic furnishings and the earthy sensuousness of tropical modernism revealed an unexpected conceptual bridge that compelled de Santi to delve deeper. 

Rather than emphasize a generational divide, “Lightness & Tension” reveals how Tenreiro’s distillation of form through joinery and proportion informs Simões’ contemporary sensibility, which embraces architecture, material experimentation, and the interplay of solidity and void. “There’s a beautiful sense of contradiction with this exhibition,” de Santi says. “Tenreiro, a pillar of Brazilian design, is known for balance and weightlessness, precision and restraint. Simões, a contemporary response to Tenreiro, fearlessly leans into material rupture and architectural tension. To have these works in dialogue is a powerful encapsulation of Brazil’s design legacy.”

Simões originally practiced as an architect, but eventually turned to sculpture, where he could engage more freely with materials. “In my art practice, I often create site-specific installations where the body is an active part of it,” he says, referencing one work where visitors reshaped space by moving a 200-foot-long chain of panels. Furniture design became a natural next step—and he possessed the technical skills to take his interest further. “I began by designing furniture and tools for my studio,” he says. “From there, functional design became another way to explore how objects engage directly with the body and domestic space.” 

His architectural know-how informs multiple pieces, such as a sculptural chaise whose slinky stainless steel body perches on a dipped concrete base. An undulating bench from the same family seems to wriggle as a soft ochre cushion nestles snugly into its voids, warming an otherwise clinical material with velvety plushness. Other works channel a rawer sensibility. A trio of low stools preserves the irregular seams and voids of their negative molds, capturing imperfections that might otherwise be sanded away. A cocktail table whose thick glass top resembles an icy lagoon perches precariously on a jagged oxidized steel base. The shimmering surface of a galvanized lounge chair glints between pink, gold, and green as light dances across. “I’m drawn to that fragile balance where life feels like it could tip or crash either way,” Simões says. “That’s where the tension is, and that’s where creativity lives.”

Simões also devised the scenography, a gridded steel stage suspended above delicate mounds of sand, cement, and stone. “The goal was to bring raw materials from the studio directly into the exhibition, shown in their primal state before they’re transformed into solid, resistant forms,” he says. The rawness balances Tenreiro’s subtle gestures—slender caned dining chairs, a rare solid rosewood loveseat—whose poetic lightness sharpens their structural clarity. “I placed them so each could frame the other,” de Santi says. “Tenreiro’s restraint amplifies Lucas’s presence, and his structures reveal the subtle complexity in Tenreiro’s simplicity.”

“Lightness & Tension” is the latest chapter in de Santi’s larger ambition to reframe Brazil’s design legacy as a living continuum shaped by those pushing its boundaries today. This fall, he will launch a new guild initiative at PAD London to protect and authenticate original Brazilian design in the market by introducing a rigorous new certification process. “Collectors and institutions are no longer looking for Brazilian design as a decorative accent,” he says. “They’re engaging with it as serious cultural production. There’s a growing recognition of its historical depth and technical sophistication. For me, it signals that Brazilian design has moved from being ‘emerging’ to being part of the global canon.” 

“Lightness & Tension” will be on view at Christie’s Los Angeles (336 N Camden Dr, Beverly Hills) until September 19.