Henri Matisse, Yves Saint Laurent : le beau, la mode et le bonheur

Exhibition at the Matisse Museum, Nice, 17 June – 28 September 2026

If there were one common thread linking Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008), it would undoubtedly be their desire to transcend the established boundaries between the ‘fine arts’ and the ‘applied arts ’. For Matisse, decorative prints – with their dynamism – became a means of creating a pictorial space that went ‘beyond the limits of the tangible’; for Yves Saint Laurent, painting offered the possibility of moving from the two-dimensional plane to three-dimensional space, of conceiving the garment as a mobile that unfolds in space, an art in motion.

Through a wide selection of works, textiles, haute couture pieces and archival documents, this exhibition catalogue offers a unique, cross-disciplinary exploration of the two creators, revealing how art and fashion, in the work of Matisse and Saint Laurent, converge and enrich one another to bring about a lasting transformation of taste and creativity in the 20th century.