Giuseppe Scapinelli Italy-Brazil, 1891-1982
Scapinelli, a dandy in the land of design
Born in 1911 in Modena, Italy, Giuseppe Scapinelli is a versatile artist. An architect, painter, ceramist, sculptor and designer, he constantly reinvents himself in search of beauty, whatever the medium.
In the post-war context, with his diploma in architecture obtained in 1941 and his immense imagination in his luggage, he organised his departure for Brazil in 1948.
In 1950, he founded his own architectural firm in Sao Paulo, where he enjoyed success and rubbed shoulders with high society. A perfect Italian dandy, bon vivant, fond of company and parties, he became a socialite.
A brilliant and inventive jack-of-all-trades, he could not limit himself to this first success. He then embarked on design, and at the same time created the "Fábrica de Móveis Giesse" and the "Fábrica de Tapete Santa Helena".
He developed a very personal style that corresponded to him, with elegance in modernity as the key word. Handling both the most sensual curves and the angular straight lines freely inspired by the modernist Streamline movement, Scapinelli always finds a balance, knowing how to compensate for the massive appearance of a piece of furniture by the softness he brings to the finishes. Everything in his design demonstrates the artist's mastery and his great sensitivity to wood, particularly Brazilian Caviuna, which he made his favourite material. Attentive to the material, Scapinelli knows how to find the forms to highlight its texture, its colour, and to give it its fullest expression in order to touch the public's sensitivity. He particularly deserves the title that Sérgio Campos gave him in the monograph he dedicated to him, the "Designer of Emotion".
Taking advantage of his very sociable character, Scapinelli became a great disseminator of modernism by opening his design gallery, Margutta, in the mid-1950s, in which he offered pieces by other designers that he knew how to defend and make known through his activity of producing articles and photographic reports. For in addition to being a genius creator, Scapinelli was also a passer-by, conscious of being an actor in a great artistic movement that would mark his time and future generations, to the great delight of today's amateurs and collectors.
