An unprecedented tribute to a pioneer of modern art
At the Fondation Following the “Icons of Modern Art” exhibitions, dedicated to great collectors such as Sergei Shchukin, the brothers Mikhail Morozov and Ivan Morozov, as well as Samuel Courtauld, the Fondation Louis Vuitton continues its exploration of the pioneering figures who contributed to the history of modern art with an exceptional exhibition: “Gustave Fayet. Collector – Creator”, presented from 9 October 2026 to 8 March 2027. This major project occupies all the spaces of the Fondation Louis Vuitton and unfolds in two parts, Gustave Fayet collector and Gustave Fayet creator, revealing the singularity of a passion where collection, creation and artistic commitment respond to one another. The exhibition thus draws the portrait of an essential actor of modernity at the turn of the century, today unjustly forgotten. The exhibition constitutes an unprecedented event. It brings together, for the first time in a century, more than 250 works from an extraordinary collection, now dispersed throughout the world, and 374 creations by Gustave Fayet, most of which have never been shown to the public and were restored for the occasion. The result of a multi-year investigation, the exhibition benefits from the support of 64 international institutions and 71 private collections. This unique event reveals the leading personality that was Gustave Fayet (1865-1925), at once a passionate collector, an artist, but also a prolific creator and a tireless entrepreneur in the field of decorative arts. Behind this little-known name lies one of the great defenders of the avant-garde of his time, a man who actively contributed to the emergence of modern art in all its forms. Gustave Fayet was among the first to collect Van Gogh, to exhibit Picasso or to establish in his home, in the heart of Paris, a “Gauguin museum”, rich with nearly 200 works, where the artists and collectors of the era flocked. A friend and fervent admirer of Redon, he offered him the opportunity to create a large decorative scheme, which remained secret, in his abbey in the South of France at Fontfroide. Gustave Fayet was not only an exceptional collector who gathered more than 750 major works of modern art (excluding prints). In the second part of his life, he was also a creator whose success marked the decorative arts of the early 20th century. Painter, watercolourist, ceramist, decorator, designer of carpets, fabrics and wallpapers, book illustrator, he embodies a generation for whom art irrigates all aspects of life. His creations, distributed in the greatest galleries and important salons of his time, seduced figures as influential as Paul Poiret, Jacques Doucet or Jeanne Lanvin. From Art Nouveau to Art Deco, Fayet fully participated in the invention of a new art of living where fine arts and decorative arts merge. For Gustave Fayet, collecting and creating unite in the same impulse. This first exhibition of international scale dedicated to this pioneering figure in many respects, reveals a teeming universe and opens a new chapter in modern art and the decorative arts of the early 20th century. This ambitious project brings together a total of 728 works and documents divided between the two parts of the exhibition. Gustave Fayet: the collection presented on three levels of the Fondation Louis Vuitton The exhibition highlights a set of 10 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, 78 works by Paul Gauguin, 86 works by Odilon Redon, as well as paintings and pastels by Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Paul Signac, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse. Some highlightsSelf-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe by Vincent Van Gogh.One of the landmark events of this exhibition is the presentation of the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe by Vincent Van Gogh, which has not been exhibited in France since 1937 and has never been lent for an exhibition since 1990. Painted after the dramatic break between Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, this poignant painting shows an artist wounded but resolved to continue painting. The Self-Portrait with Palette by Paul Gauguin will echo it: two radical visions of the modern artist thus respond to each other in an unprecedented dialogue. The Yellow Christ, Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ and The Breton Calvary: three masterpieces by GauguinThe exhibition brings together The Yellow Christ (1889, Buffalo AKG Art Museum), Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ (1890-1891, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and The Breton Calvary (1889, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels), which belonged to Gustave Fayet and his close associates George Daniel de Monfreid and Maurice Fabre. Three paintings, three collectors from the South of France, united and complicit in their passion for Gauguin, three ways of self-portraiture form a unique constellation testifying to the decisive role played by Fayet in the artist’s recognition. This is the first time these three works have been reunited in France. Day, Night and Silence: an extraordinary decor by Odilon RedonAnother major moment of the tour, the presentation of the decor that Odilon Redon painted for the library of the Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide, which Fayet bought in 1908 to restore and transform into a “total work of art”. The panels are still carefully preserved there. For the first time, Day, Night and Silence, true artistic testaments of Redon, are revealed to the general public. For Fayet, the work and friendship of the Symbolist painter opened the way to a suggestive and spiritual art that nourished his own creation. Gustave Fayet creator: a teeming universe, a heritage restored and revealed on the top floor of the Fondation A rich set of creations brought together for the first time: 49 ceramics, 17 design templates, 87 watercolours on blotting paper, 15 paintings, pastels and gouaches, and 10 illustrated books, including the 42 plates he drew after Mireille, the Provençal poem by Frédéric Mistral, and his testament-album, Flowers. Some highlightsThe first artistic enterprise of Gustave Fayet: ceramics and the collaboration with Louis Paul In 1896, Gustave Fayet launched his first enterprise in the field of decorative arts. With the painter and sculptor Louis Paul (1858-1922), a former student of Rodin, he founded a stoneware workshop in Béziers which would produce more than a hundred ceramics until 1904. Their spirit of initiative was quickly rewarded: in June 1898, Fayet presented to Siegfried Bing some stoneware trials which seduced the Parisian gallery owner, then at the forefront of decorative research. From the “stain” to the “gardens of fantasy”: watercolours on blotting paperAround 1912, after nearly ten years of interruption, Gustave Fayet took up the brush again: the artist had profoundly transformed. The controlled universe of his first Languedoc landscapes was succeeded by strange forms, emerging in a floating and indeterminate world, on the borders of abstraction. “A beautiful stain can be the starting point for a beautiful drawing,” he noted, exploiting the hazards of the encounter between watercolour and blotting paper to bring forth, within the material itself, a profusion of flowers. These works soon became his visual signature, which he would later apply to wallpapers, fabrics and carpets. “No more geometric lines, no more symmetry… but fantasy”: carpets designed for the Atelier de la DauphineIn 1920, Gustave Fayet founded the Atelier de la Dauphine in Paris, intended to transform into carpets the “thousands of documents, drawings, watercolours” accumulated since his first blotters in 1912. His carpets met with immediate success among enthusiasts, Jeanne Lanvin, Jacques Doucet, Léon Losseau, the Kapferer brothers, Robert de Rothschild or even the Maharaja of Indore… This production was part of a project to renew decor, which opposed traditional geometric motifs with a botany freely inspired by plant and aquatic forms: “No more geometric lines, no more symmetry, no more repeating bouquets of flowers […] but fantasy. We can never put enough of it into our works.” Each carpet is thus read like a painting. Important restorations: carpets, preparatory cards, dressesOn the occasion of the exhibition, important restoration campaigns were carried out by the Fondation Louis Vuitton, including the carpets made for the Maison Léon Losseau in Mons (Belgium), a masterpiece of Art Nouveau, as well as a set of preparatory design templates, revealing a remarkable part of production. A dozen dresses illustrating his links with Paul Poiret, Jacques Doucet and Jeanne Lanvin have been identified and restored. With the exhibition “Gustave Fayet, Collector – Creator”, the Fondation Louis Vuitton reveals a forgotten continent of the history of modern art and the Decorative Arts: the fascinating universe of a man whose entire life seems to have been guided by the words of his friend André Suarès: “He did everything with art”. Curatorship, scenography, publications and associated programmingSylvie Patry, general curator of heritage and internationally recognised specialist in late 19th and early 20th-century art, is the general curator of the exhibition and directs the catalogue on the collection of Gustave Fayet. Angeline Scherf, curator at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, is responsible for the curatorship of the section dedicated to the creator as well as the direction of its catalogue. The Fondation Louis Vuitton invited Robert Carsen to imagine a sensitive and immersive scenography, bringing to life the multiple worlds of Gustave Fayet. Through the play of atmospheres, colours and the architecture of the spaces, he brings back to life se
