MARC DU PLANTIER (1901-1975)
- Jun 20, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 23, 2025
Marc du Plantier was a multi-talented artist with many interests and an emblematic figure of the 1940's.
Born in Madagascar in 1901, du Plantier was interested in drawing from an early age which lead him to studying both architecture (at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1922) and painting (at the Académie Julian).
Although he was expected to pursue a career in banking or the diplomatic services, his false start in mathematics at the École polytechnique was the catalysts for a switch over to a career in the design world.
Having worked as a fashion designer for French fashion houses - Doucet-Doeuillet and Jenny where he met his future wife Anne (née Germaine Knabel) to being one of the most brilliant decorators of his day, the French designer was a neo-classicist avant-garde modernist in the 1930s and 1940s and later on his style evolved into a more abstract sensibility until he was rediscovered by gallerist Yves Gastou in the 1980's.
Nowadays, Marc du Plantier is best known for his furniture.
By the 1930's, the young designer was recognised for his talent as an interior designer and was quickly entrusted with the design of a number of significant projects thanks to the support of Christian Bérard (1902-1949) and the art auctioneer, art historian and novelist Maurice Rheims (1910-2003).
He was soon working for the elite, including Henri de Rothschild amongst others.
His Paris apartment on Boulevard Sucher in Paris was also undeniably a showcase of exquisite Greco-Roman sculptures and Egyptian claw-footed armchairs influenced by the discovery of of the tomb of Tutankhamum in 1922 by Howard Carter.
Du Plantier is renown for his pared-back geometric forms and references to Ancient Greece and Egypt. He moved to Algiers and exiled to Madrid (he spent the war years 'in exile' like most designers of that time) where in 1939, he decorated the residence of the Count and Countess of Elda and was the favourite designer of the Madrid aristocracy. He later travelled to Mexico City and Los Angeles where he had showrooms in the 1960's called Artedécor.
Nonetheless, he returned to France after the war in 1949 with a new a style leaning towards a pure, rawer look.
His work began to use quartz and amethyst into his designs with a series of furniture in acrylic glass.
The 1967 series of Cosmic furniture for Lacloche and Maurice Rheims were his last commissions before his death in 1975.
Marc du Plantier remains to this day one of the greatest decorators of the twentieth century amongst Jean-Michel Frank and Jean-Royère.
