Hartis and CMS Collection Present Roberto Platé’s Meditative Columns in Pierre Cardin’s Former Paris Apartment

This spring, Hartis and CMS Collection - founded by Joanna Chevalier, Hervé Mikaeloff and  François Sarkozy - present a selection of works by Argentine painter and scenographer Roberto Platé. They are  installed alongside the pieces of Hugo Besnier's Tour de Mains furniture collection, in Pierre Cardin's former  apartment on Quai Anatole France.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1940 and trained at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, Roberto Platé was a  leading figure of the Argentinian avant-garde before being forced into exile in Paris in 1968. He arrived in Paris with  the TSE (Théâtre Sans Explication) collective, alongside Alfredo Arias and Copi, and never left. Over the following  decades, he signed more than a hundred scenographies for Europe's greatest stages - the Opéra Garnier, the  Comédie-Française, the Théâtre du Rond-Point - working with Marguerite Duras, Jorge Lavelli, Claude Régy and  Lucinda Childs, among others. Duras devoted a celebrated text to his painting, "The Painting Exhibition," published  in her book Writing (Gallimard, 1993).

Throughout his theatre career, Platé never stopped painting. The works selected for the Hartis apartment belong  to a series of vertical compositions, columns of color and movement, steeped in the artist's long engagement with  Sufism and the idea of unity. Like horizons turned on their axis they are meditations on the essential: structure,  gesture, breath.

The dialogue with Hugo Besnier's furniture is not incidental. Platé spent his life building spaces for others, sets in  which actors moved, lived, spoke. Besnier designs furniture for the same purpose: to hold a body, to welcome a  gesture, to inhabit a room. Both share a conviction that beauty is born from the encounter between the hand and  the material. In the apartment on Quai Anatole France, their works meet on common ground.

Following its inaugural season in October 2025, Hartis apartment confirms its singular vocation: a living space  where collectible furniture, artisan craft and art meet in the intimacy of a room designed for living.

Hartis and CMS Collection are partners of both PAD Paris and Art Paris as part of their respective Off programs.  The apartment will be open to visitors of both fairs during the week of 8 to 12 April.

Confidences of a Tour de Mains: Hartis × CMS Collection present Roberto Platé.

Paris, 8 April - 25 April 2026, 

From 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM,  

By appointment rsvp@hartisparis.com