“There was a time when people only knew Niemeyer,” says Carlos Junqueira, the New York–based design dealer behind Brazilian gallery Espasso. “But there are so many talented designers and architects before and after him.”
When Junqueira opened Espasso’s first location, in New York in 2002, Oscar Niemeyer, the Brazilian modernist known for his swooping, space-age buildings, was one of the only Brazilian designers with an international following. Junqueira—a lawyer turned professional aesthete—has taken it upon himself to change that, exhibiting underrepresented midcentury talents like Sergio Rodrigues and Lina Bo Bardi as well as Niemeyer and a spate of the country’s contemporary stars, such as Zanini de Zanine and Carlos Motta, in his showrooms in New York, Los Angeles, and London.
Next up? Miami. With its easy access to the Latin American market and a luxury design industry in full bloom, the sun-soaked city was the perfect locale to add to the map. A spare 2,000-square-foot space with a verdant backyard garden in the up-and-coming Ironside neighborhood did the trick. And it didn’t hurt that many of the gallery’s interior design and architecture clients were opening offices nearby. Now the city’s peripatetic population, or those just passing through, can glimpse Jorge Zalszupin’s 1962-designed Petalas table, Zanini de Zanine’s Anil chair sculpted from reclaimed Ipe wood, or Oscar Niemeyer’s slick black-lacquered Marquesa bench with its sinuous, scrolling silhouette.
“If you look at Brazil it’s a melting pot of cultures—you have Portuguese, French, Spanish, Japanese—and the creativity comes from all different angles,” Junqueira explains. “My goal is to be the bridge between our history and what we’re doing now.”