Since the foundation of the common “Studio Campana Objetos” in 1983, Humberto and Fernando Campana work in the artistic design area.
The bigger brother, Humberto Campaba (born in 1953) studied Law at the Universidad de São Paulo before he began working as sculptor and jewelry designer. His younger brother Fernando (born in 1961) studied architecture.
In their common studio in São Paulo/Brazil, they design furniture, lamps and objects for renowned manufacturers such as Alessi, O Luce, Cappellini, Magis or Edra.
The ideas for their unusual designs probably lie back to the politic and social backgrounds of their hometown Brazil. The Campana used material came partly out of the west-High-tech laboratory, and partly out of the São Paulo slums. The single elements of their furniture pieces and objects do not appear fixed industrially, but by an artist’s hand, spontaneous and casually. The viewer will initially look irritates, as the Campana works remind of instability by simultaneous vivacity.
The brothers are famous to an international audience since 1998, as the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated them the Projects 66 exposition together with the German lamps designer Ingo Maurer. The curator Paola Antonelli wrote in a catalogue about them at that time:+
”The materials are buyable, they are easy to handle and cheap; the forms are universal and practical. The intuitive and spontaneous designed furniture pieces of the Campana brothers completely use expression-liberty that is possible today.”
The New York exposition also allowed to ticket the works of the Campana brothers with the style determination “tropic modern”. Exemplary for the style of the Campana objects are the sofa “Boa” (2002 for Edra), the organic and vivid like a mountain of knotted snakes; the chair “Favela” (2003 for Edra), which looks like rods, kept together by unknowing hands; the lounger “Sushi” (2002 for Edra), that looks as one threw a lot of patches on a pile or the fruits basket “Blow Up” (2004 for Alessi) that acts like a chaotic collection of metal rods after an explosion.
With their unusual and provocative but simultaneously authentic designs, Humberto and Fernando Campana made themselves an international name which is why they count to the most famous designers of South America today.
Website by Humberto & Fernando Campana
Alessi