By / MOOK Scenic Spots Family Travel Life Network Editorial Team
Eslite Gallery will present the exhibition “A Breeze from Paris” from May 31 to June 29, 2014, featuring Lalan as the central figure to showcase the brilliance of 20th-century Chinese artists who lived and worked in France. In addition to showcasing dozens of Lalan’s outstanding paintings from different periods, the exhibition also includes works by Tseng Haiwen, Pan Yuliang, Xiong Bingming, and Chang Yu, highlighting the brilliant sparks generated by the encounter and collision of Eastern and Western art.
145, 1991, Mixed media on paper, 64x45cm (Image provided by Eslite Gallery)
Lalan was born in 1921 into a scholarly family in Guizhou, China. At the age of 14, through her cousin’s introduction, she met and fell in love with Zao Wou-Ki, who was studying painting at the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts at the time. As a result, Lalan deliberately enrolled in the Music Department of the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and the talented pair soared together—a true romance. Lalan and Zao Wou-Ki married in 1941 and went hand in hand to Paris in 1948. The highly talented Lalan began creating electronic music in Paris and served as Zao Wou-Ki’s muse. Although their marriage ended in divorce in 1957, it marked the beginning of Lalan’s own painting journey. Encouraged by her second husband, Marcel van Thienen, she took up the brush and continued creating until her passing in 1995.
110, 1977, Oil on canvas, 36x24cm (Image provided by Eslite Gallery)
The Asian art world knows Lalan more as Zao Wou-Ki’s first wife than as an artist in her own right, yet her achievements in painting are truly outstanding. In the early stages of her painting career, Lalan was greatly influenced by Zao Wou-Ki, leading her to begin with abstract art and draw inspiration from ancient Chinese characters. Her works feature bold lines and intense colors, conveying the artist’s pursuit of personal expression. In the 1970s, Lalan delved deeply into traditional Chinese landscape art, producing numerous landscape-themed pieces often depicting mountain and river imagery, while striving for compositions rich in mood—serene and profound. In her later years, she returned to abstraction, using lighter colors and more musical brushstrokes, and even began combining her own composed music, performing dances in front of her paintings.
5, 1970, Oil on canvas, 130x89cm (Image provided by Eslite Gallery)
“A Breeze from Paris” showcases over 30 works by Lalan, spanning representative pieces from the late 1950s when she first picked up the brush to the 1990s until her passing, presenting a complete picture of the evolution and transitions in her artistic style throughout her career. Also on display are Tseng Haiwen’s abstract works on paper with strong calligraphic beauty, Pan Yuliang’s paintings full of feminine charm, as well as Xiong Bingming’s sculptures and Chang Yu’s prints. The city of Paris, a capital of art, has not only brought endless inspiration to the development of Chinese art but Chinese artists have also injected fresh perspectives here, adding boundless brilliance to the history of world art.