HENRI MATISSE–YVES SAINT LAURENT

Beauty, Fashion and Happiness

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The Musée Matisse Nice and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris have joined forces to mount a major exhibition devoted to two leading creative geniuses who continually reexamined the twentieth century, exploring its canons while transgressing them, in order to abolish the established boundaries between the “fine arts” and the “applied arts.”

The exhibition highlights the connections between the painter and the couturier and creates a dialogue between their works. It draws on the rich collections of the Musée Matisse Nice and of the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, supplemented by important loans from France and abroad.

Bringing together 160 works—haute couture creations, popular traditional garments, paintings, drawings, textiles, accessories and archival documents—the Musée Matisse Nice offers us a unique journey highlighting the profound associations that the couturier—one of the most innovative voices in French fashion—forged with the art of Henri Matisse, one of the greatest artists of his time.

Exhibition on view at the Musée Matisse Nice from June 17 through September 28, 2026
An exhibition originated by the Musée Matisse Nice and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris
https://www.musee-matisse-nice.org

Curators
Serena Bucalo-Mussely, exhibition curator and commissioner, and Aymeric Jeudy, historian, director of the Musée Matisse Nice, researcher associated with the Centre de la Méditerranée moderne et contemporaine (Université Nice Côte d’Azur).