Pair of wooden Z-line armchairs with a a light grey fabric in pristine condition by Brazilian Modernist Master José Zanine Caldas.
"Armchair N" by José Zanine Caldas - Designed in 1954, this armchair with straight lines was widely publicized in international magazines in the 1950s. It has the unmistakable trait of Zanine and the reduced dimensions characteristic of the time. It was reissued in 2009.
Caldas (1918-2001) was a self-taught Brazilian architect and designer. 
He made both sculptural, carved furniture from local woods and Modernist plywood furniture.
In the early 1940s Zanine started the 'Z Artistic Furniture' (“Móveis Artísticos Z”) line.
Other designers of the period include Joaquim Tenreiro, Jorge Zalszupin, Luis Barragan, Sergio Rodrigues and Lina Bo Bardi.
Caldas ' workshop produced the prototypes of projects signed by names such as Lúcio Costa, Oswaldo Arthur Bratke and Oscar Niemeyer.
In 1948, he founded Móveis Artísticos Z in São José dos Campos (SP), together with Sebastião Henrique da Cunha Pontes, Paulo Mello and Hellmuth Schicker, producing furniture with a strong modernist influence.
Born in Belmonte, southern Bahia, Zanine was passionate about works and sawmills since he was a child. 
At the age of 13, he started making Christmas cribs for his neighbors using syringe boxes from his father, who was a doctor. He took drawing classes with a private teacher. 
At the age of eighteen he went to São Paulo to work as a draftsman in a construction company. 
Two years later he opened his own firm in Rio de Janeiro to build models. In Rio de Janeiro he built dozens of houses in the neighborhood of Joatinga, a place of privileged geography, located between São Conrado and Barra da Tijuca. 
In 1980, he founded the Center for the Development of Wood Applications (DAM), a center to stimulate research on the use of Brazilian wood in civil construction. Its main objective was to prevent the increasing deforestation in the country.
In the late 1980s, his work was exhibited at the Louvre Museum in Paris, bringing him international recognition.