Yves Saint Laurent Exhibit Coming to Southern California’s Orange County Museum of Art

An exhibition on Yves Saint Laurent is coming to Southern California’s Orange County Museum of Art, opening June 28.

Titled “Yves Saint Laurent: Line and Expression,” the show dives into the design drawings of the French couturier, born in Algeria in 1936. Featuring his original sketches — works on paper in black ink or pencil, enriched with colors — the display will include a collection of photographs, jewelry accessories and haute couture garments from 1963 to 2001.

“Yves Saint Laurent’s sketches differed from the fashion drawings of his contemporaries and are a substantial body of artistic work in their own right. Every December 1 and June 1, before each haute couture collection, and whether in Marrakech or in Paris, the couturier’s working method entailed detaching himself from the world to imagine his future collections. On scattered papers, loose sheets or in spiral notebooks, Saint Laurent would begin each collection with a barrage of sketches. Serving as working, preparatory documents for the in­house workshops, who were tasked with interpreting the garment from the drawing and transforming it into three dimensions, these sketches reveal the couturier’s true artistic intentions,” notes the museum, adding, “Passionate about the arts, and in particular painting, his palette of natural and exotic hues would encompass Goya pink, Picasso red and Chagall blue. Certain color combinations, which others would consider incongruent, became a signature in the hands of Saint Laurent: green against blue, orange alongside pink.”

Curated by Olivier Saillard and Gaël Mamine, the exhibition is organized by the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech and Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, with a loan from the collection of the Fondation Pierre Bergé — Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.

“Yves Saint Laurent: Line and Expression” will open alongside “Color Is the First Revelation of the World,” exploring the intersection of color — hues of blue — and form. It takes inspiration from Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica and features more than 20 artists including Cy Twombly, Yves Klein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Chris Burden and Agnes Martin.

The two shows will be on view from June 28 to Oct. 27, following the current Joan Brown retrospective, which is available until June 2.

“This suite of exhibitions celebrates a breadth of extraordinary creative vision from sculpture to drawing to fashion to painting. From the intimate drawings of Yves Saint Laurent — inspired by his beloved city of Marrakech — through to a constellation of artists exploring blue as a medium for understanding the world, these shows offer embodied sensory experiences that expand our understanding of color, material, and process. It is an honor to present the U.S. premiere of ‘Line and Expression’ and to create new moments of wonder, awe, and encounter for audiences here in Orange County,” said Heidi Zuckerman, chief executive officer and director of the Orange County Museum of Art, in a statement.

In 2022, OCMA unveiled its new home in Costa Mesa, Calif., at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus, announcing free admission to the public for the first 10 years. The museum was first known as the Balboa Pavilion Gallery, founded in 1962 by 13 women looking to exhibit modern and contemporary art. It became the Newport Harbor Art Museum before being renamed the Orange County Museum of Art in the ‘90s.