Yves Saint Laurent's partner Pierre Berge has removed four Andy Warhol portraits of the fashion designer from a major Paris exhibition on the US pop artist only days before its launch.

Berge told AFP that he had asked for the series of 1974 works to be removed from a section of the show featuring other Warhol portraits of designers, such as Giorgio Armani or Sonia Rykiel, under the title "glamour".

"I don't think Yves Saint Laurent comes under the category of 'glamour'," Berge said.

"I told the curator I did not see things this way - either he changed Saint Laurent's place or I would withdraw the paintings.

"Apparently this was not possible for one reason or another and so I withdrew the four works."

Berge says the YSL portraits instead could have been hung in a section titled "artists".

"I don't deny he was a designer - that was how he described himself. But I think he was more than that."

"I regret these portraits will not be on show for the public," Alain Cueff, curator of the show, said.

Warhol's Wide World opens at the Grand Palais on March 18 and is shaping up as one of the year's top art happenings, with some of the 150 works coming out of private collections for the first time.