Pompidou acquires 70 works by the Campana brothers

The Pompidou Centre will acquire around 70 works and documents by Brazilian designers Humberto Campana and Fernando Campana, the brothers' studio and the Parisian museum of modern art announced on Friday.

Almost 70 pieces, including some of the most striking ones made by the brother and sister duo, are now part of the French museum's collection, making the Campanas the contemporary designers with the greatest representation in the Pompidou collection.

In a statement, the Campana Institute reported that the relationship between Estúdio Campana and the Pompidou Centre began in 2004 , with the acquisition of the iconic Vermelha (1998) and Favela (2003) chairs.

Over the past two decades, this relationship has deepened through the Institute’s participation in exhibitions such as Face to Face: Arcimboldo (2021) and Repetition (2023) at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, curated by Marie-Ange Brayer and Chiara Parisi.

The collaboration culminated in the donation of two major installations: Pele (2021) and Surveillance (2021).

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The Pompidou Center confirmed, also in a statement, that Estúdio Campana, as well as publishers and the Friedman Benda gallery, donated to its design collection nearly 70 works , “accompanied by a set of around twenty sketchbooks” by these Brazilian artists, who were described, in the same text, as “major figures in contemporary design”.

“Drawing references from all fields of art, they contributed to the transformation of the language of contemporary design through their approach to reuse or their animist vision of the object, marked by Brazilian culture,” the French museum pointed out.

The acquisition includes contributions from the Campana Institute, international design galleries Friedman Benda (USA), Carpenters Workshop Gallery (France, UK and USA) and Giustini Stagetti (Italy), as well as renowned partners such as Edra, Louis Vuitton, Alessi and Bernardaud.

The announcement was made two days after the signing of a protocol of agreement for the opening of a Pompidou Center in Foz do Iguaçu, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, close to the borders with Paraguay and Argentina.