Originally from Egypt, Yves Hayat first developed his aesthetic sensibilities living in a country enriched with history and cultural diversity. Art was his first love. In 1956, after the first Egyptian Revolution, Hayat left for France. For five years, he studied Art at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs of Nice. In 1973, Hayat chooses to go into advertising and marketing, which led him to open his own agency. The creative trade captive Hayat. His experience in the field also enabled him to discover and learn to use new forms of technologies, and to master his techniques. In the 1990s, equipped with those skills, he decided to return to the Art and rediscovers the old masters, photographing people, the streets, society products, museum paintings and recuperating magazine and web images which are carefully classified. Hayat is a perfect example of his time: an open mind on society, its streets, its media, its internet. While running his successful advertising business, he starts to show his artwork in galleries. Soon, his art activity took precedence over his profession, which he stopped in 2002.

Although Yves Hayat does not consider himself as a painter, photographer or designer, he is widely known as a “plasticien”, an untranslatable French term that refers to an artist who puts the meaning of his work to the fore and uses all the various media artistic expression, all the techniques and supports to express it.