This ambitious project occupies all the spaces of the Fondation Louis Vuitton along a two-part itinerary, Gustave Fayet collector and Gustave Fayet, creator, revealing the singularity of a career in which collecting, creation and artistic commitment respond to one another. The exhibition thus draws the portrait of an essential figure of modernism at the turn of the century, unjustly forgotten today.
The exhibition is an unprecedented event. It brings together, on the one hand, for the first time in a century, more than 250 works from an extraordinary collection, now dispersed around the world, and, on the other hand, 325 creations by Gustave Fayet, most of them never shown to the public and restored for the occasion.
The itinerary highlights a group of 10 paintings by Vincent van Gogh, 78 works by Paul Gauguin, 88 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, Edouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse.
The result of several years of research, the exhibition benefits from the support of 64 international institutions and 71 private collections.
This original exhibition reveals a leading personality, gradually relegated to oblivion: Gustave Fayet (1865-1925), a passionate collector, artist but also prolific creator, was a tireless and exceptional entrepreneur, visionary in the field of decorative arts. Behind this little-known name lies in fact one of the greatest champions and discoverers of the avant-garde of his time, a man who actively helped bring about modern art in all its forms. Gustave Fayet was indeed among the first to collect van Gogh, to exhibit Picasso, and to establish at home, in the heart of Paris, a “Gauguin museum” with nearly 200 works, where all the artists and great collectors of the era thronged. A friend and ardent admirer of Redon, he gave him the opportunity to create a large decorative scheme, which remained secret, in his abbey in southern France at Fontfroide.
Gustave Fayet was not only an exceptional collector who assembled more than 740 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, ceramicist, decorator, creator of rugs, textiles and wallpapers, book illustrator, he embodied that generation for whom art permeates every aspect of life. His creations, distributed in the greatest galleries and major salons of his time, appealed to influential figures such as Paul Poiret, Jacques Doucet or Jeanne Lanvin. From Art Nouveau to Art Deco, Fayet fully participated in inventing a new art of living in which fine arts and decorative arts merge. For Gustave Fayet, collecting and creating came together in a single impulse.
This first event of international scope devoted to this singular and in many ways pioneering figure 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 740 works and documents divided between the two parts of the exhibition.