Yves Saint-laurent - Original Signed Drawing

Yves SAINT-LAURENT (1936 – 2008), French fashion designer
The dazzling Tallien evoked by Christian Favre Jaume
Original work, watercolor on paper monogrammed lower left, titled “The dazzling Tallien evoked by Christian Favre Jaume”. Dimensions: 63.5 x 49 cm This is a poster project for which Yves Saint-Laurent also designed the sets for the ballet Musique de Foire created in 1955, the year he joined the haute couture house Christian Dior. The piece is performed in three acts, the first performance took place in March 1956 at the Ballets de Monte Carlo. Some of these set designs are now kept at the Musée de la Fondation Yves Saint-Laurent in Paris. Provenance: Collection of Marcelle Lloret, former director of the Red Cross in Oran, aunt of the current owner, friend of the Saint-Laurent family in Oran (Algeria). Yves Mathieu Saint-Laurent discovered the theatre in Oran during a performance of Molière's L'Ecole des femmes, staged by Louis Jouvet in 1950. Attracted by drawing, for which he already showed a certain talent, the young Yves Mathieu hesitated to move towards the world of fashion or that of theatre. He would embrace both careers. He trained at the school of the Chambre Syndicale de Haute Couture in Paris, before being noticed by Michel de Burnhoff, director of Vogue France, who brought him in at Christian Dior. Throughout his career he would design costumes and sets for theatre and ballets: Cyrano de Bergerac and Notre-Dame de Paris by Roland Petit, Jean-Louis Barrault, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, the actresses would be his muses, Zizi Jeanmaire, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani and Claudia Cardinale. Madame Tallien, born Thérésia Cabarrus, muse of the French Revolution, follower of the ideas of the Enlightenment, held a salon animated by the most brilliant minds of her time. The Terror forced her to flee Paris to settle in Bordeaux. At the risk of her life, she saved many Bordeaux residents from the guillotine with the help of her lover, Jean-Lambert Tallien, representative of the Convention in Bordeaux. In July 1794, she was arrested with her lover and sentenced to death. She then pushed Tallien to conspire against Robespierre, thus allowing the fall of the dictator and thus contributing to putting an end to the reign of Terror.