Hayat was born in 1946 in Cairo, Egypt. After the Egyptian Revolution, he left Cairo with his family in 1956 to live in the South of France. In 1967, he started studying art at the Ecole Nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Nice. In the 1970s, he began a career in advertising and marketing. In 1996, he returned to art, which he practiced alongside his advertising career for several years, before devoting himself entirely to it in early 2000.
Yves Hayat's art focuses on the current state of the world, of this ultra-media universe, of its domination by images, icons of appearance, luxury and violence. Using superimpositions, misappropriations and transparencies, Yves Hayat stages his works. He brings face to face beauty and horror, indifference and fanaticism, luxury and violence, confronting the viewer with the human ambivalence and the contradictions of this world.
Yves Hayat lives between Paris and Nice, where he has his artist’s studio. Since 2006, he has exhibited his works internationally in London, New York, Istanbul, Paris, Monaco, Cologne, Geneva, Vienna, Kuwait and Beirut, among many others. His works have been exhibited in major international art fairs, including Art Dubai, Volta Basel, Contemporary Istanbul, Moderne Art Fair Paris, Art Miami, Zona Maco Mexico, KIAF Seoul and many others.