José Zanin Caldas was born on the southern coast of Bahia and learned design by observing. Caldas grew up surrounded by master craftsmen and could not help but adopt rare skills and techniques, and he achieved mastery in practice through endless personal experiments. His legacy includes 700 models created for the main architects of Brazilian modernism, Lucio Costa, Oswaldo Bratke, and Oscar Niemeyer, about 500 houses, and at least 150 furniture models designed in two different periods. 

The objects by José Zanín Caldas, sensual and powerful, were always created to reveal the potential and absolute beauty of each piece of wood. Some of them were never repeated. He promoted a new, conscious approach to material usage and sustainability, making this his protest against humanity’s dominance over nature. The central piece of the collection is the Namoradeira chair, created during the main period of Caldas’s work, the years of his work on Móveis Denúncia - “Protest Furniture”. The tete-a-tete chair is incredibly poetic: it shows all the power and strength of nature of the Amazon forests, but at the same time, its shape is a true embodiment of balance. A rare piece of collector's design, it serves as an expressive metaphor for his life's journey.

The Namoradeira chair is dedicated to the second central work of the exhibition - the painting Zanine by Daniela Busarello, which she created as an homage to the work of Caldas. For artist and architect Daniela Busarello, the nature and genius of a place hold just as much significance. Like Caldas, she was born in Brazil and grew up surrounded by the timeless trees of the rainforest. Her work on the Amazon reflects this extraordinary ecosystem's power, strength, and fragility. The exhibition presents works from the artist’s series Inner Landscape, Elapsed Time, Hommage À Courbet, Mar Verde, and Anima Mundi, created between 2017 and 2024. Her metaphorical language invites us to look beyond the limits of what is known by the mind and to perceive the works sensually and emotionally.