Yves Conte was born in Marseille, France. After studying at Aix en Provence University, he decided to return to live in St. Julien le Montagnier, a 12th century village perched high, north of Aix and home to his family for 500 years. He has been living, writing, and painting there since 1972, the year of his first exhibition.

Initially he painted the landscapes of his childhood, influenced by his admiration for Cézanne and the elevated view from his studio window–geometric fields ablaze with lavendar and mustard seed and the wild landscape beyond. Eventually he became interested in Medieval illuminated manuscripts, whether they were Oriental or European.

"Beam"

These themes, predominantly religious, are nonetheless a pictorial rendering of the theater of life: desire, fear, and pleasure. Today Yves continues painting “in the quest of the sacred.”

His joyous paintings—on any surface he might find intriguing—give particular importance to the luminosity of colors and to humorous allusions using a mixture of universal symbols from everywhere and every time.