Routes and Resonances: Jean Royère, Roberto Platé, and Creative Journeys Across Continents

 

In the decades following the Second World War, artists and designers crossed continents in search of opportunity, freedom, and new ways of seeing. Their journeys produced more than a simple exchange of styles; they gave rise to visual languages shaped by movement, memory, and cultural encounter.

Crossed Trajectories explores these intersecting paths through the work of Jean Royère, Roberto Platé, Joaquim Tenreiro, Gino Sarfatti, Maria Pergay, and others whose careers unfolded between Europe and Latin America. Royère carried his distinctive vision from Paris to Beirut, Lima, and São Paulo, while designers such as Tenreiro helped define a modern Brazilian aesthetic rooted in local materials and craftsmanship.

The exchange flowed in both directions. As Europeans looked southward, Latin American artists traveled north, often seeking creative freedom. In Paris, Roberto Platé became part of the city's avant-garde milieu, creating works that move between abstraction and symbolism. As Marguerite Duras wrote, he painted “signs that look as though they are things.”

Rather than presenting these figures separately, the exhibition places them in dialogue. A Platé canvas resonates with a Royère chair; a Tenreiro form finds an echo in a Sarfatti light. Installed in Galerie Gabriel's penthouse above Manhattan, Crossed Trajectories reveals modernism as a story of migration, exchange, and unexpected affinities—where art and design emerge from a continuous conversation across borders.