FOUJITA / SANYU: MUSES & MODELS [Catalogue]

Foujita / Sanyu: Muses & Models 19–30 March 2019 Paris 18–31 May 2019 Hong Kong

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Foujita / Sanyu: Muses & Models

Paris Exhibition 19–30 March 2019 46 rue du Bac, Paris Monday–Friday 10am–6pm Saturdays by appointment Hong Kong Exhibition 18–31 May 2019 14/F, St. George’s Building 2 Ice House Street, Central, Hong Kong Monday–Saturday 10am–6pm Saturday 25 May 10am–7pm Sunday 26 May 10am–6pm Visit us at phillips.com Enquiries Clara Rivollet International Specialist, 20th Century & Contemporary Art CRivollet@phillips.com +33 6 42 09 97 39 We would like to extend our gratitude to Sylvie Buisson, Rita Wong and Jean-Paul Desroches for their generous collaboration.

A warm thank you to Susanna Graves, Charlotte Adlard, Danielle So, Delissa Handoko and Fusako Oshima for the coordination, essays and research.

Reproduction rights for Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita © Fondation Foujita / ADAGP, Paris 2019 Front cover Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) Nu allongé, Madeleine, 1931 watercolour and ink on paper Back cover Sanyu (1895-1966) Femme à la feur watercolour and ink on paper

Paris which is none other than a capital of the arts and Foujita Sylvie Buisson

On 6 August 1913, Foujita returned to a Paris that, at the dawn of the 20th century, was none other than the international capital of every artistic avant-garde movements.

He was 27 years old, armed with a diploma in Western painting from the Tokyo University of the Arts and a command of the French language, which would be crucial to succeeding in the endeavour he had been pursuing for nearly 15 years: to study and conquer Paris.

Foujita chez Toshio Bando, 1923 © Courtesy Archives artistiques Sylvie Buisson, 2019 for Phillips

He was familiar with traditional Japanese painting on paper and silk, or Nihon-Ga, and Western oil painting, or Yo-Ga, but while the rare art reviews he happened upon in Tokyo gave him snippets of information about France’s artistic life, he was largely unaware of the capabilities of his Parisian contemporaries working some 15,000 kilometres away. He knew nothing but the names of Rodin, Manet, Monet and Van Dongen, of whom one could fne a few poor black-andwhite reproductions in Japan’s only arts and literary review, Shirakaba. Foujita knew nothing about anything else (styles, names, number nationality, lifestyle, way of thinking); however, he believed that with a bit of luck and time he would be learn how to detect them. How could it be otherwise?

His frst lodging in Paris - a modest room in the Hôtel Odessa in Montparnasse - also functioned as his frst studio. From its window, he noticed in the centre of the fruit, fower and vegetable market held on Boulevard Edgard Quinet a woman arching her back; he painted a quick sketch of this year-round vendor in a style reminiscent of Bonnard or Vuillard. He delighted in this visual feast of working-class Paris unfolding right at his feet and in the knowledge that his Paris dream was fnally coming true. He was at its heart, in Montparnasse.

This woman with a chignon and a striped dress captivated him at frst glance, sparking in him an intense desire to get at the source of the Western world.

‘They predicted that I would be the best painter in Japan, but the best painter of Paris is what I dreamed of becoming. I had to get to the source.’

Foujita in 1917 © Image Courtesy Archives artistiques Sylvie Buisson, 2019 for Phillips

Not far from there, the terraces of Boulevard Montparnasse teemed with stunning specimens of the young international artists. Paris lured them into its nets; its reputation had been cemented ever since Impressionism had asserted itself and liberty had triumphed once again over academic decorum in the land of Rousseau and Voltaire! They were all under 30 and hailed from every corner of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Spain and even Asia starting at the turn of the century. They had one shared goal: to live freely, of course,

but more importantly to fnd international glory. Foujita was among those who could not rely on his family. His departure from Tokyo resembled a true emigration; he felt an immense obligation to succeed and to get results with respect to his imperious father, who gave him a generous allowance, and to himself. Foujita embarked on a very demanding process of discovery and creation. He had to remain faithful to himself while also entering a disconcerting milieu. One of its inhabitants, Chilean painter Manual Ortiz de Zarate, noticed him on the boulevard the day afer his arrival: he was still dressed in white linen from head to toe, with a pith helmet, the face of a Buddha and an extravagant allure - a remarkable vision for Ortiz, who decided to introduce him to Pablo Picasso. The Catalan painter liked meeting new arrivals and Foujita, who knew nothing, went along with it. He was already happy just to breathe in the oh-so-light air of Montparnasse, to plot out a simple life of studies and liberties that Japan could not give him. Then suddenly he realized that this artists’ district was far more promising than he had imagined. What if, in addition to its hospitality and republican values, France could recreate heaven for artists lacking in fraternity and recognition? When he passed through Picasso’s door on Rue Schoelcher and saw the Cubist totems, sawed violins, still lifes fashioned of paper, string, wood, assemblages of all sorts crowding the space and keeping company with other wonders - those picked up by the artist for his own collection, the small and large Naif portraits by Henri Rousseau, the strangeness, the naivete...a new vision of the world appeared before his eyes: the much-longed for shock was complete.

(fg 1) Amedeo Modigliani, Nu couché de dos, 1917, Barnes Collection, Philadelphie, USA

Paris did indeed prove to be the theatre of every possibility and Foujita was not about to forget what he had suspected.

Furthermore, the young Modernity set invited him in.

The new Japanese artist who had spontaneously become Picasso’s friend was welcomed into a formidable community.

Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau and André Salmon, the poets who spoke so highly of their artist friends, presented him with a diorama of fabulous characters who were ultimately quite similar to him. Foujita metamorphosed in no time; the Parisian miracle at work.

‘I had barely returned from Picasso’s, I went into my room and through all my colours and painting supplies on the foor.

It was only the second day afer my arrival in Paris and I was already trying to forget the techniques I had learned in Japan, from how to hold my palette to the way I washed my brushes.’

(fg 2) Constantin Brancusi, Mlle Pogany I, 1912-13, plâtre, Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Photo credit : © Philippe Migeat - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP © Succession Brancusi - All rights reserved. ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

(fg 3) Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita Baigneuses, 1917, Collection privée, Grande-Bretagne © Fondation Foujita / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Of course, the beginning was harsh and the road was long, but he eventually emerged from the purgatory in which his reconstruction imprisoned him. France and Japan have always been considered to be enshrouded in such diferent myths about ways of thinking and cultures. Claude LéviStrauss even talked about the land of opposites. Foujita had no choice but to invent the bridges that would link these opposing cultures. When he strolled through the 1913 Autumn Salon alongside his new pals Kawashima Riichiro, Oscar Mietschaninof, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaïm Soutine, Chana Orlof, Moïse Kisling, Marie Vassilief, Marc Chagall, André Derain, Jules Pascin, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and many more - all worthy representatives of the efervescent, rebellious breeding ground that was Montparnasse - he was already thinking about developing a style that would fully distinguish him from the others. The war plunged them all into poverty and precarious circumstances that had no merits other than it tightened their bonds. That was crucial for Foujita, who needed to feel emotionally supported, especially since his fancée Tomiko refused to join him. Afer taking a half-hearted stab at Cubism and even thinking about giving up painting for dance, he slowly wooed his models and fnally met Fernande Barrey and married her 15 days later. He then decided to defnitively reject all the isms (Cubism, Orphism, Expressionism, etc.) and to hang from the branches of his own native land. Paradoxically, Japan seemed closer to him now, appearing in his memory livelier than ever like a sort of school from which he could draw ideas to build a style strongly infuenced by all the contributions of the Montparnasse painters, especially Modigliani and Constantin Brancusi.

‘I love Tokyo, but being in Paris gives me the distance I need to understand myself.’

Foujita needed to break with a Japan that was socially sufocating but that, seen from afar, paired naturally with the best of the West. Foujita was able to diferentiate himself by turning to Japan and its thousand-year tradition, a descendant of China and its four thousand years of history. Carefully hiding his work to protect it from commentary and infuence, he experimented for several years, travelling to England and the French countryside and absorbing each encounter and museum visited until the day in June 1917 when he achieved glory by showing 110 watercolours with Georges Chéron, who also sold Soutine and Modigliani, André Salmon wrote a preface. All the pieces were sold on the frst night. And they clamoured for more for the autumn. ; the press exclaimed that Foujita’s take on Japanism had won over Paris. He had arrived.

From there, his life would unfurl like a rich novel, punctuated by moments of hell, heaven, success, jubilation and dark periods on the arms of four women, each more alluring than the next, who sparked new creative impulses in him. A lady’s man, yes, but faithful to each of them. They nourished him and he rendered the velvet touch of their skin like no one before him. Nearly 10,000 items comprise his body of work, which never ceased to surprise. His thick, near-sighted glasses discerned better than anyone else the tiniest parcel of perfection beauty hidden in a face, a hand motion, the fall of hair. Foujita excels in the details and on a grand scale. His supreme speciality: staging and showcasing women. They were constantly at his side over the course of a life in which he admitted to having worn out more than 3,000 models.

Lunar nourishment, as white as milk which gave him his letters of nobility.

‘Foujita succeeded in making points of contact between European art and Japanese art,’ wrote André Warnod afer visiting the 1925 Autumn Salon. He had won his gambit; he fung the doors open for the artists back home who would be able to develop their talent on the ground he cleared for them.’

Moving through Foujita’s work amounts to travelling alongside him, on the wings of his lacquered paintings, both small and large, or into the most modest of his sketches imbued with meaning. It is like circling the earth four times, journeying from Japan to France and back, beyond the seas, and retracing a geographic and intellectual journey that is unique in the history of art. On the wings of his airy, lunar creations, taking a trip between reality and reverie.

From his childhood, he was sensitive to Western images, to other places and other ways. ‘Since my childhood, without knowing why, I adored France and dreamed of Paris.’

He stepped into the small church located on the school path to continuously gaze upon the holy images. As an adolescent, he accompanied his father to an exhibition of French works, came to a stop before a painting by Claude Monet and would never stop lobbying his father to follow in the footsteps of the artist.

Foujita au Salon d’Automne, 1923 © Courtesy Archives artistiques Sylvie Buisson, 2019 for Phillips © Fondation Foujita / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

While most of the foreign artists in Paris only stayed for the bit of time that it took for them to be able to return home and make a living, Foujita remained for over 40 years. This man who personifed refnement would be Japan’s ambassador in Paris as he smuggled the East into the West, on the belief that truth in art lives solely in the fusion of genres and cultures and that its most beautiful manifestations hide in the inner-most depths of the studios of Montmartre and Montparnasse.

Foujita et Youki devant chez Chéron, 1923 © Courtesy Archives artistiques Sylvie Buisson, 2019 for Phillips

Foujita would spend 17 years in France before returning to Japan to visit his father and his family in Tokyo in 1929.

Before that, he became the star of theRoaring Twenties.

His ease and sociability were surpassed only by the amount of intense work he performed, at the expense of sleep, to remain perpetually at the peak of his craf. His body of work runs into high numbers; fortunately it is protected by two essential qualities: the inimitable quality of the drawing and the lines which outline the shapes of this master of calligraphy and observation and the complexity of the unique technique that he perfected in secret throughout his life and which still enchants us today.

Why is it so important to remember above all things Foujita’s birth in Paris, his motives and the love story that binds him to France? Because this essential leap into the unknown, which could have been fatal, was a bold move that engaged him over his entire career as an artist. Guided by an unfailing code of honour, with the conscience of a Samurai warrior, he fought with determination and genius on the strength of his hand to ensure his art would triumph.

He wielded his brushes like sabres to avoid dishonouring his home country, his family or his adopted country, France, while striving to secure victory for the omnipotence of art over the old monsters that tore peoples apart.

Sylvie Buisson, President of the Union Française des Experts, Léonard Foujita expert, art historian, author of the comprehensive catalogue raisonné of Foujita’s work in 1985. www.foujita.org

1. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Nude with Raised Arms signed and dated ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita 1926’ lower lef pencil, watercolor and colored crayons on tracing paper laid down on canvas 56.3 x 38.2 cm (22 1/8 x 15 in.)

Executed in 1926.

Provenance Galerie Paul Pétridès, Paris (no. 13.901) Private Collection, Japan, by whom acquired between the late 1980s and early 1990s Christie’s London, 28 June, 2017, lot 228 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Private Collection, Japan Literature Sylvie and Dominique Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita Catalogue raisonné général: volume 1, ACR Editions, Paris, 1987, no. 26.24, p. 383 (illustrated)

2. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Woman signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right watercolour and ink on paper 46 x 30 cm. (18 1/8 x 11 3/4 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. W29, p. 211 (illustrated)

3. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

1886–1968

Contemplating woman signed and dated ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita 1928’ lower right oil on canvas 38 x 45 cm. (14 7/8 x 17 3/4 in.)

Executed in 1928.

Provenance Crédit Municipal, Paris, France Artcurial, Paris, 5 December 2005, lot 21 Private Collection, Switzerland Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Sylvie Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita Catalogue général raisonné: Volume 2, Edition ACR, Paris, 2001, no. 28.195, p. 273 (illustrated)

4. Sanyu

1895-1966

Kneeling Nude ink on paper 45 x 28.5 cm. (17 3/4 x 11 1/4 in.)

This work is registered in the archives of Rita Wong under the reference number D653.

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, USA

5. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Nu allongé, Madeleine signed and dated ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita 1931’ lower lef watercolour and ink on paper 52.5 x 74.5 cm. (20 5/8 x 29 3/8 in.)

Painted in 1931, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Sylvie Buisson from 8 February 2017 and will be included in the Archive under number D31.0137.A. Provenance Robert de Rothschild, Paris Then by descent to Cécile de Rothschild Christie’s London, 30 November 1982, lot 149 Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, Europe Exhibited Paris, Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol, Foujita, Peindre dans les années folles, 7 March - 15 July 2018, no. 85, p.128 (illustrated)

In the early twentieth century, bohemian culture fourished on the banks of the River Seine in Paris, drawing numerous artists from all over the world to congregate, forming a creative ethos which incubated the École de Paris and among these rich cultures and artistic inspirations saw the rise of Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita. Arriving in Paris in 1913, Foujita became active in its art scene, fully absorbed into the swirling atmosphere of the Parisian Années Folles which saw his creative desire freed from some of the perceived constraints of Japanese artistic formality. His sensational breakthrough came in the form of his depiction of the nude, a traditional canon of Western art history yet having the delicacy of traditional Japanese aesthetics retained. His portraits of the female nude are in the permanent collection of numerous art museums and institutions around the world including Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy at the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris and Reclining Nude with a Cat in the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. His exceptional synthesis and balance in the treatment of the subject is demonstrated beautifully in Nu allongé, Madeleine.

Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita Reclining Nude with a Cat, 1931 Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama © Fondation Foujita / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Madeleine Lequeux in 1930 Courtesy Archives artistiques Sylvie Buisson, 2019 for Phillips

Working as a hostess during the day and dancer at the Casino de Paris at night, the radiant beauty of young Madeleine Lequeux captured Foujita’s heart in 1930 and Nu allongé, Madeleine is a testament to the artist’s particularly fruitful period of life with Madeleine as his model. Another exceptional work that will be exhibited alongside Nu allongé, Madeleine in Foujita & Sanyu: Muses & Models is Portrait de Madeleine in which a sofer and more delicate side is evoked through Foujita’s hand.

Inspired by her vivacious personality, sensuality and striking features, Foujita employs pure colours to bring out her piercing blue eyes and golden red hair and creates smooth lines in a concise manner to construct the body contour of the woman, showcasing Foujita’s renowned technique of rendering the skin in a fne, ivory-like texture.

The enchanting gaze and pouting lips of the female nude, complimented by the folds of the bed sheet caused by her languid pose, suggest a hint of erotica and lustful sentiment. Nu allongé, Madeleine is a mesmerizing vision of the modern female nude, demonstrating Foujita’s brilliant draughtsmanship in weaving traditional Japanese aesthetics with a mastery of classical Western painting techniques within the composition and thus attracting the viewers into boundless imagination.

6. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Portrait de Madame Hélène Berthelot signed and dated ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita 1927’ lower right pencil, pastel and chalk on paper 63.5 x 93 cm. (25 x 36 5/8 in.)

Executed in 1927.

Provenance Private Collection, courtesy Galerie Dina Vierny Exhibited Paris, Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol, Foujita, Peindre dans les années folles, 7 March - 15 July 2018, no. 88, p.130 (illustrated) Literature Sylvie and Dominique Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita: Catalogue général raisonné Volume 1, Paris, 1987, no. 27.14, p. 392 (illustrated)

In the roaring 1920s of France, Foujita in his thirties had gained signifcant popularity and began receiving commisions from Parisian celebrities and society women as a form of income. These women were curious to experience being painted by a rising star of the art world. One of his many patrons, the sitter in Portrait of Madame Hélène Berthelot is wife of Phillipe Berthelot— secretary general at the Ministry of Foreign Afairs. Adorned with jewels, bright expressive eyes and an enigmatic smile, she is at ease with her artist, implying that Foujita may have been close friends with the Berthelots, “Foujita appreciated the breakfast at Phillipe and Hélène Berthelot where there was an atmosphere more literary and political” (p. 126 Sylvie and Dominique Buisson, LéonardTsuguharu Foujita: Catalogue général raisonné Volume 1, Paris, 2001, p. 126)

viewer to fully concentrate on the subject; her facial features, short cropped hair, fowing dress and opulent jewelry beftting of a woman of her social standing. Thin outlines over a minimal background also allude to the artist’s Japanese roots, the smooth lines and aesthetic treatment of space extracted from his Japanese artistic background. It is through Foujita’s test sketchs that the artist frst captures the essence of his model, refning his drawings several times before transfering them onto the canvas. In the completed work, Portrait de Madame Berthelot is rendered in the artist’s signature milky white glaze in a predominantly monochrome palette.

Occupying the majority of the composition, Foujita maintains the attention towards Madame Berthelot, and lightly accesorises the composition with her favourite things, highlighting her jewelry and fshes with delicate touches of colour.

A test sketch for a painting, the present work’s simple composition ofers a glimpse into Foujita’s thought processes and exploration of details. The clean background allows the

Lounging comfortably in luxury, Madame Hélène Berthelot directly addresses her viewer, revealing a glimpse of a socialite living in the spiritedness and colourful world of the 1920s.

7. Toshio Bando Nude signed ‘Toshio [in Kanji] Bando’ upper right oil on canvas 22 x 16 cm. (8 5/8 x 6 1/4 in.)

Painted in 1920-1930.

Provenance Private Collection, France Collection Bernard Lacoste, France Millon & Associés, Paris, France, 20 June 2018, lot 174 Acquired at the above by the present owner Private Collection, France

Born in 1895 in Tokushima, Japan, he arrived in Paris in July 1922 and frst settled in the Latin Quartier before moving to the Montparnasse area. He was referred to Foujita whom he met the same year and shared a studio rue Delambre together with Foujita’s wife at the time, the artist Fernande Barrey. This started a strong friendship between the two Japanese artists.

Foujita, who had been in Paris for ten years and already very integrated into the Parisian artistic scene, introduced Bando to his gallerist Georges Chéron, who organized exhibitions of Bando’s work until his death in 1931. Probably escaping anonymity thanks to his friendship with Foujita, Bando’s trajectory exemplifes one of hundreds of young Japanese artists coming to Montparnasse

Foujita, Toshio Bando and Japanese artists in Paris in 1923 Courtesy Archives artistiques Sylvie Buisson, 2019 for Phillips

in the 1920s. Akiko Kawachi, in her thesis about Japanese artists in the 1920s in Paris counts 208 Japanese artists listed in the Parisian salon exhibitions exhibitors between 1920 and 1929.

These artists either regrouped around Foujita, symbol of the Parisian avant-garde, or followed the academic way in line with Kuroda Seiki, who had stayed in Paris in the late 19th Century before returning to Tokyo and becoming the frst director of the Western painting department at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. With a body of works comprising nudes, still lifes, landscapes and several self-portraits, Toshio Bando remained fairly classical in his expression, compared to his contemporaries, Foujita and Sanyu.

8. Sanyu

1895-1966

Femme à la feur (Woman smelling fowers) signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower lef watercolour and ink on paper 26.8 x 21 cm. (10 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.)

Executed circa 1920-1930.

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Exhibited Taipei, Eslite Gallery, An intimate view, Sanyu’s Small Masterpieces, 3 March - 1 April 2018, p.136 (illustrated) Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. W169, p. 252 (illustrated)

9. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

1886–1968

Madeleine signed and dated ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita 1931’ lower lef watercolour and ink on paper 44 x 33 cm. (17 3/8 x 12 7/8 in.)

Executed in 1931.

Provenance Acquired in 1932, then by decent to the present owner Private Collection, France Exhibited Paris, France, Musée de Montparnasse, Les Japonais à Paris, 2001 Dinard, France, Palais des Arts, Foujita lemaître de Montparnasse, 26 June - 25 September 2004 Loiret, France, Château de Chamerolles, Foujita et ses amis du Montparnasse, 30 June - 19 September 2010 Paris, France, Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol, Foujita, Peindre dans les années folles, 7 March 15 July 2018, no. 85, p. 177 (illustrated) Literature Sylvie Buisson, Léonard Foujita catalogue raisonné général: volume 2, ACR Editions, Paris, 2001, no. 31.85, p. 313 (illustrated)

10. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Naiade signed, dated and inscribed ‘Foujita 1949 N.Y.’ lower lef pencil on paper 59 x 115 cm. (23 1/4 x 45 1/4 in.)

Executed in 1949.

Provenance Cornette de Saint-Cyr, Paris, France, Sale Succession Kimiyo Foujita-Première partie, 26 March 2013, lot 2 Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, Switzerland

11. Sanyu

1895-1966

Reclining nude ink on paper 27 x 44 cm. (10 5/8 x 17 3/8 in.)

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0251, p. 26 (illustrated)

Paris, Woman and Modernism Clara Rivollet

Having emerged victorious from World War I, France in the 1920s was a place of freedom thanks to relative political stability, which was lacking in most of the European countries undone by the war and vulnerable to extremism of all stripes: political, proletarian, capitalist or fascist.

As those countries rebuilt themselves on a foundation of totalitarianism that favoured the group over the individual, France ofered a counterpoint by cultivating individuality in a newly dawned era of separation of Church and State (Act of 9 December 1905). It was a place where men where the masters of their own destiny and turned eagerly to a new kind of hedonism. As described by Gladys Fabre in ‘What is modernity? In what respect does woman contribute to a critical renewal?1, this unprecedented context of freedom in a climate of post-traumatic uncertainty forced the forging of a new path, whose preferred medium for experimenting with this modernity was art.

Woman, as a favourite artistic subject of modern artists, reconciles the present with the past of Western art history and thus legitimises the insertion of artistic modernism within that tradition. Beyond its role as conferrer of legitimacy, the feminine subject is a symbol of otherness. It invokes transgressive eroticism, a mythological world and a transcendence that was quite welcome for a modernity seeking to overturn the codes of classical representation.

While the female nude has been a classic subject in Western art since Antiquity, it holds a marginal place in classic Asian art, save for within the intimacy of certain Japanese prints where women are essentially relegated to serving as objects of desire. The discovery of the feminine nude model, therefore, appeared to Chinese artist Sanyu and to Japanese artist Foujita as a heretical feld of exploration, all the more so since it had no real footing in their respective cultures.

Would this freedom enable them to push the subject beyond of their European contemporaries? Foujita recounts, ‘An idea came to me one day: in Japanese painting, there is but a small number of nudes. Even painters like Harunobu or Utamamo only allowed a glimpse of part of a leg or knee and could only express the sensation of the skin at these places. That is what encouraged me to recommence with

1 Gladys Fabre, exhibition catalogue La dona, metamorfosi de la modernitat, Fondaciò Joan Miro, 26 November 2004 – 6 February 2005

(fg 1) Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita Portrait of Suzy Solidor, 1927 Collection Château-musée Grimaldi, Cagnessur-mer, France © Fondation Foujita / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

(fg 2) Sanyu, Femme nue sur un tapis, 1929 Private Collection Image courtesy of The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation

(fg 3) Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita Nu couché à la toile de Jouy, 1922 Collection Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France © Fondation Foujita / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

nudes afer an eight-year interruption, with the specifc goal of depicting the quality of the most beautiful of all matters: that of the human skin.’2

of the day. The latter appears gazing into a mirror in the works of Foujita and Sanyu, with whom she is also said to have had an afair.

From model to muse

With his carefully curated image as an extravagant dandy, Foujita was both an actor and witness at the heart of this Parnassian competition. As for Sanyu, starting from the mid-1920s, he assiduously attended the open nude posing sessions at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière to draw its women with exaggeratedly full fgures and to occasionally sketch its students, but he nevertheless remained relatively marginalised. According to Rita Wong, who wrote a detailed comparative study of Sanyu and Foujita in the catalogue raisonné of Sanyu’s drawings and watercolours: ‘We do not know if there was a direct relationship between Sanyu and Foujita. Foujita was the only Asian of repute and the only one accepted by the group of artists known as the Ecole de Paris.

Thus Sanyu had undoubtedly heard about Foujita and his art. The year afer Sanyu’s arrival in Paris, Foujita produced his magnifcent and bewitching Reclining Nude with Toile de

Afer the frst world war pressed women into adopting active roles in society to compensate for the lack of men who had lef for the front, the 1920s saw the women’s liberation movement gain momentum and extend outside closed circles to all aspects of society, including politics (attainment of voting rights in the frst European countries), fashion (fapper style) and art. Thus, the hedonistic and libertine atmosphere of inter-war Paris brought forth the frst female celebrities, whose fame and power of infuence were unequalled in their time: Mistinguett, the music hall star; Suzy Solidor (whose portrait Foujita created in 1926, Chateau-Musée Grimaldi collection, Cagnes-sur-Mer fg 1), a singer and charismatic, shocking staple of Parisian night life; and Kiki de Montparnasse, muse to many artists

(fg 4) Edouard Manet Olympia, 1863 Collection Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

2 Foujita quoted by Sylvie Buisson, Les modèles, in Foujita Peindre dans les années folles, exhibition catalogue, Musée Maillol, 7 March - 15 July 2019, p. 119.

(fg 5) Kitagawa Utamaro Les pêcheuses d’abalones, 1797-1798

Jouy (fg 3.), depicting the famous Kiki de Montparnasse in the style of Manet’s Olympia. (fg 4) […] Without a doubt, Sanyu saw Foujita’s masterpiece and was infuenced by him, as proven by his 1929 Femme nue sur un tapis (fg 2). This work also depicts Kiki.’3 For both Foujita and Sanyu, this quasi-pleasurable complicity with the model culminates in an unsurpassed creativity within their respective bodies of work, elevating woman to the status of active muse to this modernity.

the feminine fesh seen in Japanese prints (fg 4). He also borrowed their composition in successive planes with no depiction of depth. The extreme attention to detail captured by a fne brush that recreates every hair and eyelash of his models created an efect that is paradoxically removed from any realism. Sanyu, meanwhile, reduces the women to a few essential lines that signify more than describe. In this way he handily translated the logic of Chinese characters into drawings, thus firting with abstraction in anticipation and frenzied modernity.

On the line Sanyu and Foujita distinguish themselves from their contemporaries with their outstanding mastery of lines.

While Foujita’s lines are meticulous, descriptive and linear, Sanyu’s lines are efcient, elliptical and modulated.

Although opposites in their expression, the two artists conjure up the strength of the line in ‘the same artistic and cultural language, for calligraphy, textiles and lacquers.’4 Foujita reproduced the delicateness and milky whiteness of

3 Rita Wong, Sanyu Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, p. 25 4 Rita Wong, Sanyu Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, p. 25

The exhibition aims to be an ode both to the women of the 1920s and 1930s and to the universal modernity under the gazes of two Asians in a devastated Paris reeling from the barbarity of World War I and wrestling with political, economic and sociological uncertainties that, while creating an alarming backdrop, incongruously enabled the emergence of innovative art, constructive competition and unprecedented freedom and tolerance, like a missive of goodwill to our current era.

12. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Baigneuses (Bathers) signed and dated ‘Paris Tsuguharu Foujita [in Kanji] T. Foujita 1917’ lower right watercolour and ink on paper 41 x 23.5 cm. (16 1/8 x 9 1/4 in.)

Executed in 1917.

Provenance Sotheby’s, Paris, 13 December 2006, lot 15 Private Collection, UK Exhibited Dinard, Palais des Arts, Foujita, le maître japonais de Montparnasse, 27 June - 25 September 2004, no. 13, p. 41 (illustrated) Valence, Centro Cultural Bancaixa, 19 July -4 September 2005; Barcelona, Museo Diocesano, 7 September 23 October 2005, Foujita entre Oriente y Occidente, no. 15, p. 143 (illustrated) Literature Sylvie Buisson, Foujita Inédits catalogue général raisonné Volume 3, Editions A l’encre rouge, Archives artistiques, Fondation Nichido, Paris, 2007, no. C17.134.A, p. 85 (illustrated)

The early 1900s are considered the most formative of Foujita’s years of execution, making works from this period rare and highly sought afer. At the turn of the 20th Century, Foujita lef his native Japan and embarked on a voyage to Paris, where he met and befriended vanguards of the art world—Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, among others. It was during this period that Foujita refned the style for which he is best known, and it is in the present work Baigneuses that we detect the then-young artist’s linear refnement and mastery of colour.

1917 marked an important year in Foujita’s life. Returning to Paris from London where he stayed during the war, Foujita married Fernande Barrey, and entered a contract with Guillaume Chéron, Modigliani’s dealer—and a new stylistic preoccupation began to pervade the artist’s works. In Baigneuses, created in the same year, the bathers’ elongated faces, almond-shaped eyes, and angular fgures allude to Modigliani’s signature style, and one detects hints of Matisse through the lucidity of the rhythmic lines that outline the bathers. These are artists with whom Foujita would no doubt have been infuenced by and yet, the work is quintessentially Foujita: meticulously executed fne lines capture the delicate scene of the bathers, their bodies outlined in a translucent blue hue. In the background, abstract plants and a meandering river stream frame the scene, and inject depth into the work.

Pablo Picasso, Les Baigneuses, 1918, oil on canvas, 27 x 22 cm © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2019. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso - Paris)

Baigneuses depicts nude bathers, a classical subject that has proliferated Western art history, and until the late nineteenth century, circulated the theme of romanticised female nudes and the uninvited viewer. This visual trope has since been reinterpreted and revisited by a myriad of artists ranging from Modern masters such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gaugin, PierreAugust Renoir, Matisse, and Picasso. These Modern Artists removed the bathers from the mythological or biblical setting – for example Diana and Actaeon by Titian or Susanna and the Elders by Rembrandt – and presented them in a naturalistic environment, departing from the former allegorical or titillating interpretations.

Picasso’s Les Baigneuses was painted a year afer Foujita’s Baigneuses. Similarities can be drawn between the two as the stylisation of the body shape and placement of arms in Les Baigneuses is reminiscent of the fgures in Baigneuses. These similarities do not come as a surprise as Foujita and Picasso had met on several ocassions. Foujita had visited Picasso’s studio with fellow artist, Manuel Ortiz de Zárate in 1913, and Picasso had bought numerous works at Foujita’s frst solo exhibition at Gallery Chéron in June 1917. The energetic composition that emanate from the fgures in both paintings is a testimony to the infuence Foujita and Picasso had on each other; as well as Foujita’s vision to conciliate with Western art, and yet, Baigneuses is also characteristically Far Eastern, typifed by the fat perspective and the artist’s dexterous manipulation of ink, brush and medium. It is these two realms—East and West—that Foujita straddles and masters.

13. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Nude ink on paper 30 x 40 cm. (11 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.)

This work is registered in the archives of Rita Wong under the reference number D654.

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, USA

Sanyu paints with a fuidity that epitomises the Chinese aesthetic of ‘simplicity’. The artist’s use of Chinese ink and brush techniques is most evident in his nude ink drawings. His lines are quick, clean and precise; and yet these sketches are able to aptly capture the artist’s grasp of merging the lyrical spiritedness of traditional Chinese literati painting with Western photographic experiments with perspective through the female form, such as Man Ray and André Kertész’s.

The artist’s love for Western photography is noticeably evident through the play of perspective, where he takes on the view of a wide-angle camera lens to accentuate the hips and thighs of his nudes. One of the artist’s most loyal and well-known supporters and friends, the celebrated poet Xu Zhimo, once said that his nudes had the ‘the thighs of the universe’. Having had years of rigorous practice in traditional Chinese calligraphy since a young age, Sanyu brilliantly incorporates the ink technique into his nude drawings, evoking

the beauty of the fesh. Moving away from the traditions of Western sketching through the use of charcoal and pen, Sanyu instead uses the rhythm of the calligraphy brush to create vividly subversive lines of the fesh, not only showing his ability to create fow and resilience in movement, but also demonstrating his skill of blending Western precision of line with that of Chinese ink aesthetics. The artist’s minimalist approach was perhaps informed by Henri Matisse’s nudes in his exploration of the simplication of forms in “Themes and Variations”— a series that ultimately matured to his 1950’s paper cut out series. Rooted in the aesthetic concepts within traditional Chinese literati painting, the product of Sanyu’s western artistic exposure utilises fuid calligraphic lines to form the female silhouette, controlled yet efortless.

Sanyu’s drawings, with their pure lines and dexterous preciseness, are today recognized as the quintessential expression of his art, an example of Chinese aesthetic of simplicity and the embrace of the Modernist Minimalism.

14. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing nude ink on paper 44 x 27 cm. (17 3/8 x 10 5/8 in.)

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0450, p. 40 (illustrated)

15. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower lef ink and charcoal on paper 45.5 x 29.5 cm. (17 7/8 x 11 5/8 in.)

Provenance Galerie Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France

Exhibited Paris, Galerie Jean-Claude Riedel, Sanyu, 1992 (illustrated, n.p.)

Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0080, p. 69 (illustrated)

16. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink and charcoal on paper 45 x 28 cm. (17 3/4 x 11 in.)

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France

17. Sanyu

1895-1966

Reclining Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink on paper 26.5 x 43 cm. (10 3/8 x 16 7/8 in.)

Provenance Galerie Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Exhibited Paris, Galerie Jean-Claude Riedel, Sanyu, 1992 (illustrated, n.p.)

Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0214, electronic index p. 23 (illustrated)

18. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right pencil and charcoal on paper 56 x 32 cm. (22 x 12 5/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France

19. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right pencil on paper 55 x 33 cm. (21 5/8 x 12 7/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D1196 (illustrated online)

20. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Woman signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink on paper 43.5 x 27 cm (17 1/8 x 10 5/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0450, electronic index p. 40 (illustrated)

21. Sanyu

1895-1966

Reclining Nude ink on paper 44.5 x 27.5 cm. (17 1/2 x 10 7/8 in.)

Provenance Galerie Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0269, electronic index p. 28 (illustrated)

Sanyu: A Chinese modernist Rita Wong

When the 26-year-old Sanyu (Chang Yu)1 went to Paris in 1921 to study art, little of his past experience prepared him for what he encountered. Even though the China he lef was undergoing a radical course of modernisation, it had not yet shed the traditional artistic practices to which he had been subject since childhood and that most certainly made his initial foray into the foreign and uninhibited Paris art world all the more challenging and stimulating. Yet the creative freedom Sanyu experienced there inspired and sustained him. Thus, instead of returning home to a life of recognition and relative comfort like most of his compatriots did afer a stint abroad, Sanyu chose to remain in Paris, where he lived in poverty and died at the age of 71 in obscurity.

Sanyu (1895-1966) was born during one of the most tumultuous periods of Chinese history - one that witnessed the overthrow of a Dynasty and the beginning of a modernizing China. He was 16 years old when the Republic was founded in 1911, and although the revolutionary forces were successful in toppling the dysfunctional regime, few would have predicted the ensuing destabilization this liberation cast on the very core of China’s national spirit and identity.

Forced to confront the inefectiveness and inadequacy of antiquated social and political systems, China was further debilitated by encroaching imperialism from Western powers seeking to proft from her weakened position.

This crippling situation forced the Chinese to reassess the predicament of their torn nation.

Of the many ideas voiced, one was to modernize China as a means of regaining her strength and, indeed, her integrity.

Sanyu travelled to Tokyo to visit his second elder brother who was studying at Waseda University.

Japan, with its comprehensive modernization program launched in the 1870s during the Meiji restoration, had successfully integrated Western art education into its school curriculum. By the time Sanyu arrived, the prestigious Tokyo School of Fine Arts at already produced many graduates who imported from their studies abroad novel concepts of modernity in art. Undoubtedly, Sanyu absorbed these fresh ideas through visits to the numerous modern art exhibitions held in Tokyo during his nearly two-year stay there.

When Sanyu returned to Shanghai in 1919, the year of the historic May 4th Incident, avant-garde academicians, imbued with a cultural mission, were initiating various modernization programs across the country. Having had a glimpse of the impact of modernity on tradition in Japan, Sanyu eagerly embraced the potential of a similar movement in his own country. He made friends in Shanghai with fellow artists, and when Cai Yuanpei, chancellor of Beijing University, initiated his work/study abroad program, Sanyu jumped at the chance to travel to Paris to pursue his artistic vision.

Growing up in the fnal years of the Qing Dynasty and following the tradition customary for children of afuent families, Sanyu was schooled at home with emphasis on traditional calligraphy and painting, for which he demonstrated particular interest and talent. At the age of twenty-three,

Precisely at this time, however, the art community in Shanghai became deeply embroiled in various controversies arising from the use of nude models in life classes. At the heart of the controversy was an outcry by some educators and politicians over the depiction of the naked body as art. Rooted in the Confucian code of propriety, they objected to exposing the naked body to the public, especially to young students, who, they believed, would be morally compromised by the salacious interaction between artist and model in life classes. What need was there, they challenged, to insist on using the human body to express sentiment and, therefore, art? A highly publicized diatribe ensued between certain conservative-minded politicians and the artist Liu Haisu, then head of the academy defending the use of nude models. This resulted

1 All biographical information in this paper is based on Rita Wong, Sanyu Catalogue Raisonné: Oil Paintings (Yageo Foundation and Lin & Keng Publications, Taipei; University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2001). Sanyu was the artist’s personal Romanization of his name based on the Sichuan dialect pronunciation. Chang Yu follows the more accepted hanyu pinyin system of Romanization.

Portrait of Sanyu Image courtesy of The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation

in the so-called “nude controversy”, which continued for a decade and eventually elicited an ofcial ban on nude models in life classes, lasting, fortunately for more liberal-minded artists, only two years.

In Europe, on the other hand, the modernists of the school of Paris were continuing to forge new visions and interpretations, many redefning the new genre, emancipating it from the traditional iconographic forms and infusing it with new, broader levels of meaning and aesthetic expression. Sanyu responded to this stimulating environment by enrolling at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière where he plunged into what was to him a forbidden and exotic world of nude drawing. Caught up as he was in this heady milieu and eager to experiment, his early works in Paris engaged almost exclusively with the new nude genre.

Unlike the Western tradition in which nude representation stretches back to antiquity, there existed no such genre in the long history of Chinese art. Before the 20th century, all depictions of the naked body appeared only in chunhua, or erotic paintings, in which the drawings served didactic and pornographic purposes. Needless to say, these paintings were not widely circulated and, although coveted by collectors, were also not widely seen2. Aside from these, the only other naked fgures in China with small, usually ivory, sculptures of undressed women, used solely as models for doctors to refer to parts of the body for medical purposes, as it was considered improper for a female patient to undress in the presence of a male doctor. In short, in pre-twentieth-century China, the nude was not a subject of art. Depicting the naked body as a static expression is strictly modern and completely borrowed.

2 For a comprehensive study on the history of erotic art, literature and culture in China, see R. H Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1974).

Sanyu (lower right) with friends in Paris circa 1925 Image courtesy of The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation

Sanyu in the 1930s Image courtesy of The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation

Since Sanyu had trained in Chinese calligraphy during his youth, it is not surprising that most of his initial nudes were drawn in ink and brush.

The trained calligraphic stroke, with its varying innuendos depending on the strength with which the ink with applied, the density of the ink and the speed and rhythm of the arm, aforded Sanyu a unique chance to express the human body, not so much in terms of its anatomy, but more as a means of showing the beauty and sensitivity of a fowing line. There is no doubt that in curvilinear competence, Sanyu benefted from a long and venerable tradition, his virtuosity verifed through many years of training.

Featuring the infamous Kiki in the manner of Manet’s Olympia, this nude’s gaze bears a look of unbridled confdence and teases of viewer with her sultry allure. Painted in black and white, the work demonstrates Foujita’s signature style and his so-called grand fond blanc (great white ground). There is little doubt that Sanyu saw Foujita’s work and was infuenced by it. Even though we see similarities in their painting - the black and white palette, the use of white on white, and the black outlining of the body - the minimalist in Sanyu prevails in his stronger sense of conceptualization and abstraction, proclaiming his frmer embrace of modernism.

During his frst decade in Paris, an unleashed burst of artistic energy, driven no doubt by the discovery and unrestricted exploration of the nude genre, propelled Sanyu to produce over two thousand drawings, mostly nudes and fgures of women, which formed the preparatory corpus of work as he eventually moved into oil painting.

A critic once commented, “Sanyu [...] tries to create with oil [...] what could be done much more directly with pencil and brush. Nowhere does it seem that Sanyu needs oil to realize his intentions.”3 While this may be true to some extent, we shall examine how the transfer from drawings to the more elaborate texturing and formulations of the oil medium permitted Sanyu to develop fully his curvilinear sensitivities while imbuing his paintings with a spirit even closer to the concept of Chinese artistic traditions.

Chinese motifs are also a recurring decorative device in Sanyu’s paintings, beautifully exemplifed in nude on tapestry (CR No. 6), in which elaborate non-repeating designs decorate the tapestry on which the nude, again viewed from the back, reclines. This magnifcent painting, the largest of his early nudes, ofers some insight into Sanyu’s creative process.

Juxtaposing a symbol of modernity (the nude) against a backdrop laden with Chinese traditional motifs (the tapestry), he creates an intriguing landscape that jolts the viewer with a seemingly cultural incongruity, while ofering, at the same time, a sense of serenity and balance. Although viewed from the back, this nude, with head slightly turned, shows her face in profle, with one evocative eye gazing not at the viewer, but at what might lie beyond. This practice at exposing a single eye is used repeatedly in Sanyu’s portrayal of women, imparting to them a sense of mystery and sensuality, both elusive and seductive.

A few years earlier, in 1922, Tsuguharu Foujita had produced his hauntingly beautiful Nu couché à la toile de Jouy, which captured the Parisian fantasy.

3 “Sanyu at Van Lier, Amsterdam,” Die Groene Amsterdammer, 20 May 1933, p.12.

As his artistic career evolved, Sanyu increasingly relied solely on his own sensibilities to create a style of nude painting unique both in the Chinese art world and the European modernist arena in which he aspired to participate. In 1945, the French newspaper Le Parisien Libéré published an article by Sanyu entitled “Opinions d’un peintre chinois sur Picasso” (Refections of a Chinese painter on Picasso) in which he praises “These works by Picasso, what incredible masterpieces of our times. The power in his work is immeasurable.

I imagine Picasso letting his brush play on the canvas [...] He has moved us away from the era of academic painting. It is he who fghts conservatism. It is he who takes us down a new path.”4 The following year, Henri Pierre-Roché, a prominent art dealer and collector, when asked to loan paintings from his renowned collection for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, included in his list of works by Picasso, Braque, Duchamp and Modigliani, to name a few, four paintings by Sanyu. Sanyu strongly admired the modernists in Paris at this time, but was never able to join their ranks, aside from symbolically in Roché’s list. In China, he was very nearly forgotten, and was regarded by many not as a Chinese but a French painter. Sadly he remained equally unrecognized in France, where he was throughout most of his life marginalised and shunned. Now, four decades afer his death, Sanyu is fnally emerging as the artist he aspired to be - a Chinese modernist.

(fg 1) Xu Beihong, Nu féminin, 1921, Xu Beihong Memorial Museum, Pékin, Chine

Extract from an essay originally published by Rita Wong in the Exhibition Catalogue, ‘La dona, metamorfosi de la modernitat’ under Gladys Fabre, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain, 26 November 2004 – 6 February 2005, p. TBC Rita Wong is the author of Sanyu catalogue raisonnés Oil paintings (2001), Oil paintings Volume Two (2011), Drawings & Watercolors (2015) and Prints (2017).

4 Sanyu, “Opinions d’un peintre chinois sur Picasso”, Le Parisien Libéré, 19 January 1945. (“Ces peintures de Picasso, quels formidables chefs-d’œuvre de notre temps. La puissance de ses toiles ouvre un espace incommensurable. Et je m’imagine Picasso quand il fait jouer son pinceau sur la toile […] Elle a fait s’évader notre époque de l’académique. C’est lui qui a abattu le conservatisme.

C’est lui qui nous conduit sur un chemin nouveau. ”)

(fg 2) Sanyu, Visage, circa 1920-1930. Private Collection Image courtesy of The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation

(opposite) Sanyu, Kneeling Nude, (detail)

22. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Nude ink on paper 22 x 28.5 cm (8 5/8 x 11 1/4 in.)

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Exhibited Taipei, Eslite Gallery, An intimate view, Sanyu’s Small Masterpieces, 3 March - 1 April 2018, p. 174 (illustrated)

23. Sanyu

1895-1966

Woman’s Leg ink on paper 22 x 27.5 cm. (8 5/8 x 10 7/8 in.)

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France Exhibited Taipei, Eslite Gallery, An intimate view, Sanyu’s Small Masterpieces, 3 March - 1 April 2018, p. 175 (illustrated)

24. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right pencil and charcoal on paper 47.5 x 30.5 cm. (18 3/4 x 12 in.)

Provenance Tajan, Paris, France, 6 March 2009, lot 2 Private Collection, France

25. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Nude pencil and charcoal on paper 55 x 32 cm. (21 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France

26. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Woman ink on paper 45 x 28.5 cm. (17 3/4 x 11 1/4 in.)

Provenance Galerie Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France

27. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Woman signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink and charcoal on paper 43 x 26 cm. (16 7/8 x 10 1/4 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D2190, p. 108 (illustrated)

28. Sanyu

1895-1966

Woman Drawing ink on paper 43 x 26 cm. (16 7/8 x 10 1/4 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D2329, electronic index p. 105 (illustrated)

29. Sanyu

1895-1966

Woman’s Profle ink on paper 44 x 27.5 cm. (17 3/8 x 10 7/8 in.)

Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s Private Collection, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, France

30. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Profl de jeune femme blonde au chignon (Portrait of a blond young girl with a bun) signed ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita’ upper right, further signed dated and located ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita Paris 1927’ on the reverse oil on canvas 27 x 22 cm. (10 5/8 x 8 5/8 in.)

Painted in 1927, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Tokyo Art Club.

Provenance Galerie Tamenaga, Tokyo, Japan Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Japan, Tokyo, Galerie Tamenaga, A Retrospective― Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of his Death, 20 July – 30 September 2018 Literature Sylvie and Dominique Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita: Volume 1, Paris, 1987, no. 26.201, p. 235 (illustrated)

Second diner of the revue Paris-Montparnasse chaired by Foujita (from lef to right) Jeanne and André Salmon, Mrs Thernot, Foujita, Jacqueline Goddard-Barsotti, François Frank and Youki. Kiki de Montparnasse from the back in the foreground. Photo Chabas, © Archives Art. Sylvie Buisson, Paris 2019

One recognizes in her Greek nose, sculptural profle and long blond hair of Profl de jeune femme blonde au chignon Foujita’s famous muse of the period, Jacqueline Goddard.

Model to Derain, Matisse, Giacometti, Foujita, Jacqueline Goddard – then named Barssoti - epitomizes the quintessence of the muse: a charismatic beauty, a free spirit and a disobedience which made her eternally uncatchable. She became a novel character to writer Georges Simenon, an important photographic model to Surrealist artist Man Ray, and a close friend of Kiki de Montparnasse.

Foujita probably met Jacqueline at the Coupole or the Dôme cafés, the epicenter of the Montparnasse bohemian artistic life of the time. He became friend with the then very young Jacqueline who recalls in her unpublished memoirs that he “loved to hear his name murmured by the passers-by” as they were walking together in the streets of Paris. She goes on and gives us an eloquent and humorous testimony of Foujita’s persona in the Paris 1920s and a glimpse into their relationship.

“I became his favorite model. […] Going out with [Foujita and Youki] was quite an experience. He was like a jewelry shop window. Big earrings, an enormous watch to hide a tattoo, rings galore; his love of gold was manifest. He believed in being noticed at all costs. It was difcult for me at times to arrive at the Dôme with them. It was a ceremony.

The uniformed chaufeur would open the door to let Foujita emerge frst, then the overdressed Youki, and ultimately, but not importantly, me. A table was kept and the chairs dusted before we were seated. Waves of the hand to salute our friends that I sensed found the whole show a bit much and comical. Their car was enormous too and was the most noticeable of Paris. It was yellow, really yellow with a little bit of black…

Foufou was very protective and fatherly to me. He taught me jujitsu to protect me from all sorts of attacks including rape. He would try to take me by surprise in false alarms. It must have been hilarious to see me calmly posing for a drawing [and then] suddenly jumping on guard [in response] to an attack that was a mock one at that.”

—Jacqueline Goddard cited in Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita – the Artist Caught Between East and West by Phyllis Birnbaum, Editions Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, p. 129-130.

Man Ray, Jacqueline Goddard et une boule en miroir, 1934 Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais - © Georges Meguerditchian Man Ray (dit), Radnitzky Emmanuel (1890-1976) photographe : © Man Ray 2015 Trust/ADAGP, Paris 2019

31. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Le mépris signed ‘Foujita’ lower right graphite on vellum 23 x 16.4 cm. (9 x 6 1/2 in.)

Executed circa 1958, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Sylvie Buisson.

Provenance Private Collection Succession Kimiyo Foujita, Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris, 9 December 2013, lot 375 Private Collection Bonhams, London, 22 June 2017, lot 30 Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

32. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Petite flle avec deux chats signed and inscribed ‘Foujita’ lower centre pencil on tracing paper 30 x 24.5 cm. (11 3/4 x 9 5/8 in.)

This work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Sylvie Buisson.

Provenance Private Collection Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris, 26 March 2013, lot 272 Private Collection Bonhams, London, 2 March 2017, lot 21 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

33. Sanyu

1895-1966

Reclining Nude pencil on paper 25 x 32.5 cm (9 7/8 x 12 3/4 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D1424, on the website www.artofsanyu.org p. 9 (illustrated)

“Sanyu was obsessed by horizontal compositions, no doubt because his solid, static vibrant nudes are linked to an almost universal theme whether it concerns Greek or Roman gods, Etruscan sarcophagi or medieval gisants, Aztec or Hindu divinities, or nearer to us, the nudes of Renoir, Maillol, Matisse and Picasso. The nude is an excuse for every and any metamorphosis. It is precisely with these nudes lying on the ground, on carpets or foating horizontally that he began to paint in 1929.”

Jean-Paul Desroches, Du nu au paysage : errance ou itinéraire? in ‘Sanyu, l’écriture du corps’, 2004, p. 27

34. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

1886–1968

Madeleine Sleeping signed ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita’ lower right pencil, watercolor and chalk on paper 59.5 x 113.5 cm (23 3/8 x 44 5/8 in.)

Executed circa 1931 Provenance Poly International Auction Co. Ltd., 16 December 2017, lot 4473 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Private Collection, Asia

35. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated woman drawing ink and charcoal on paper 45 x 28.2 cm (17 3/4 x 11 1/8 in.)

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Beijing Council International Auction Co., Ltd., 18 June 2018, lot 622 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D2093, electronic index p. 90 (illustrated)

“Many drawings show fellow-students at the Grande Chaumière seated on their stools with pencil and pad in hand intent on their work. It is amusing to imagine the studio scene where students sketch the nude model while Sanyu sketches them! To him, both were equally interesting and exotic.”

Rita Wong, Sanyu: A Short Biography in ‘Sanyu l’écriture du corps’, Skira, 2004, p. 48

36. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Man ink on paper 45 x 28.5 cm (17 3/4 x 11 1/4 in.)

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Private Collection, France (acquired from the above) Private Collection, France

37. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated woman signed and dated ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU 8.1930’ lower right watercolour and ink on paper 31 x 26 cm. (12 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.)

Executed in 1930.

Provenance Private Collection, USA Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 4 October 2010, lot 317 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonne: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. W145, electronic index p. 236 (illustrated)

38. Sanyu

1895-1966

Reclining nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink on paper 28 x 45.7 cm (11 x 17 7/8 in.)

Provenance Beijing ChengXuan Auctions Co., Ltd., 18 December 2017, lot 666 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Private Collection, Asia Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0215, electronic index p. 23 (illustrated and reproduced p. 77)

39. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated woman ink on paper 45.6 x 28.4 cm (17 7/8 x 11 1/8 in.)

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France China Guardian Auctions Co., Ltd., 19 June 2017, lot 34 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D2235, electronic index p. 99 (illustrated)

40. Sanyu

1895-1966

Etudes de main (Study of hands) signed and dated ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU 30’ lower right ink on paper 44.3 x 28 cm. (17 1/2 x 11 in.)

Executed in 1930, this work is accompanied by a letter of opinion by Rita Wong.

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Artcurial, Paris, SANYU, BRUSH DRAWINGS Jean-Claude Riedel Collection, 28 November 2017, lot 67 Acquired from the above by the present owner

41. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated woman ink on paper 30.9 x 20.5 cm. (12 1/8 x 8 1/8 in.)

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Beijing Council International Auction Co., Ltd., 3 June 2017, lot 2601 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D2351, electronic index p. 106 (illustrated)

42. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Les deux amies signed ‘Tsuguharu [in Kanji] Foujita’ lower lef lead pencil and stump on paper 94.7 x 68 cm (37 1/4 x 26 3/4 in.)

Executed circa 1929.

Provenance Private Collection, France Then by descent to the present owner

Les deux amies (The two friends) is the preparatory drawing for a painting currently in a private collection. The sofly-executed precise drawing represents two female nudes seated in opposite directions, joining their gaze towards the right while gently resting their arms onto each other’s neck. Foujita ofers a beautiful allegory of friendship which exudes tenderness and harmony.

The subject matter is recurring in his work from the 1920s, with an emblematic yin-yang duality emphasized by the contrasting hairs of the two models. Les deux amies seems to have collected Foujita’s particular appreciation as he then decides to reproduce the composition into an etching with aquatint (edition of 100) as part of the famous 6-compositions series ‘Les Femmes’ (Women) representing the same two models in diferent poses

Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita, Deux Amies, 1929 Private Collection

43. Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

1886-1968

Untitled signed ‘Foujita’ lower lef watercolour, gouache and ink wash on paper 26.5 x 19.5 cm. (10 3/8 x 7 5/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection (acquired in the late 1950s) Private Collection (by descent) Christie’s, Hong Kong, 27 May 2012, lot 2257 Private Collection (acquired at the above sale) Council, Beijing, 3 June 2017, lot 2604 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

44. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated woman with extended leg signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower lef ink and charcoal on paper 45.3 x 27.8 cm (17 7/8 x 10 7/8 in.)

Provenance Beijing ChengXuan Auctions Co., Ltd., 18 December 2017, lot 672 Private Collection, Asia Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0108, electronic index p.16 (illustrated)

“The female fgures in some of [Sanyu’s] sketches and watercolours are distorted in such a way that the feet and lower half of their bodies are grossly and massively oversized while their head is drastically reduced in scale. The optical efect is that of a surrealist photographic conceit derived from the surprising angling, dramatic foreshortening, or special mirror distortion, that emphatically magnifes parts of a female body to yield a biomorphic mass, as seen in André Kertész’ Distortion series, produced in Paris in the early 1930s. Sanyu’s composition therefore both afrms the cursive drawing suggestive of automatism and the mirroring space suggested by the implied camera lens, a mirror with memory.” (Eugene Wang, Sanyu: a Chinese Surrealist in Paris in ‘Sanyu l’écriture du corps’, Skira, 2004, p. 63)

André Kertesz, Distorsion n° 60, 1933 Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais © Jean-Claude Planchet/Kertész André (dit), Kertész Andor (1894-1985) photographe © RMN-Grand Palais – copyright

Sanyu’s distorted female bodies refer to multiple inspirations: the joyful explorations of the body and its limits to the manner of Henri Moore, the surrealist representation of the subconscious and the access to another level of intangible reality as a metamorphosis of the realm of dreams and fantasies, in a continuity of the same quest throughout artists of the time and mediums of drawing, painting, sculpture and photography.

45. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated nude pencil on paper 44.5 x 25.5 cm (17 1/2 x 10 in.)

This work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Rita Wong.

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Artcurial, Paris, Sanyu, BRUSH DRAWINGS JeanClaude Riedel Collection, 28 November 2017, lot 83 Acquired from the above by the present owner Private Collection, USA Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue RaisonnĂŠ: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D1346, electronic index, p. 79 (illustrated)

46. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing Nude ink on paper 45 x 27.5 cm. (17 3/4 x 10 7/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue RaisonnÊ: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0645, on the website www.artofsanyu.org p. 13 (illustrated)

“Any descriptive element is banished in favour of a supple, quivering, synthetic contour. In short, it was what Chinese scholars call xieyi, 寫意 ‘grasp an idea and transcribe it’. Let us not forget that etymologically the ideogram ‘hua’ 畫 in Mandarin Chinese signifes ‘delineate’ or ‘confne’. […] Sanyu’s style can be seen to be both linear and curvilinear, suppressing any superfuous detail and leading inexorably to a minimalist script.”

Jean-Paul Desroches, Du nu au paysage : errance ou itinéraire? in ‘Sanyu, l’écriture du corps’, 2004, p. 27

47. Sanyu

1895-1966

Seated Nude ink on paper 31 x 21 cm. (12 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, France (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0646, on the website www.artofsanyu.org p. 13 (illustrated)

48. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink and charcoal on paper 50.7 x 20 cm (19 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, Paris Acquired from the above circa 1998 by Nick Scheeres Phillips Hong Kong, 27 May 2018, lot 29 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Private Collection, Asia Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0167, electronic index p. 20 (illustrated)

49. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing nude with bended leg signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink and charcoal on paper 42.5 x 26 cm (16 3/4 x 10 1/4 in.)

Provenance Loudmer Scp., Paris, 1 April 1996, lot 44 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0156, electronic index p. 19 (illustrated and reproduced p. 56)

50. Sanyu

1895-1966

Femme nu assise (Reclining nude) signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right ink and charcoal on paper 28.5 x 44.2 cm (11 1/4 x 17 3/8 in.)

Provenance Private Collection, Paris, France Aguttes, Lyon, 22 October 2018, lot 5 Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D0027, electronic index p. 10 (illustrated)

51. Sanyu

1895-1966

Leaning Nude signed ‘Yu [in Chinese] SANYU’ lower right pencil and charcoal on paper 26 x 47 cm (10 1/4 x 18 1/2 in.)

Provenance Loudmer Scp., Paris, 1 April 1996, lot 28 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Private Collection, France Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D1037, electronic index p. 58 (illustrated)

52. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing woman with raised arms (double sided) pencil and charcoal on paper 47.7 x 24 cm (18 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.)

This work is accompanied by a letter of opinion issued by Rita Wong.

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue RaisonnĂŠ: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D1122, electronic index p. 64 (illustrated)

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53. Sanyu

1895-1966

Standing nude (double sided) pencil and charcoal on paper 45 x 28 cm. (17 3/4 x 11 in.)

Provenance Collection Jean-Claude Riedel, Paris, France Beijing Council International Auction Co., Ltd., 18 June 2018, lot 621 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Rita Wong, SANYU Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings and Watercolours, Taipei, 2014, no. D1240, electronic index p. 71 (illustrated)

verso

Born in Tokyo in 1886 during a time of great change in Japan, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita received formal training at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, now known as the Tokyo University of the Arts, quickly achieving success with commissions from the emperors of Korea and Japan. Arriving in Paris in 1913, inspired by the rich bohemian culture on the banks of the River Seine, he befriended established artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani, developing a unique artistic style that had the delicacy of traditional Japanese aesthetics and the zealousness in the Western art historical canon.

His enthrallment with the French avant-garde was reciprocated when he was awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1925, becoming one of the most prominent émigré artists of the École de Paris. Following the breakup of his third marriage with Youki, he took his new muse, Madeleine Lequeux, to South America in 1931.

During their sojourn in Brazil in the same year,

Foujita held a solo exhibition at the Royal Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, which was well received by local art critics and collectors alike and continued on to be exhibited in São Paulo the following spring, eventually returning to Japan over the course of the Second World War where he primarily produced documentary war paintings. Following the war, Foujita lef Japan and returned to France, becoming a French citizen in 1955, continuing to paint energetically until his last days. Converting to Catholicism during this time of his life, Foujita adopted the Christian name Léonard, in homage to Leonardo da Vinci, and was buried in Reims in northern France following his death in 1968 at the age of 81. Today, his works can be found in countless public and private collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Hiroshima Museum of Art.

Born in Sichuan in 1895, Sanyu was the youngest child in a wealthy family who owned a silk factory. As a young boy who trained in Chinese calligraphy, he was always encouraged to savour his love for art. Afer a trip to Japan in 1918 where he encountered Modern Western Art, he lef Asia for Paris and its Avant-garde scene and arrived there in 1920. Once settled, unlike many of his contemporaries who studied at schools which taught the strict academic rules of painting, he chose to further his studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, a school dedicated to painting and sculpture free from academic constraint. It was there that he spent several years mastering the art of sketching.

Sanyu soon became a familiar feature of Montparnasse. At the Académie, he befriended Alberto Giacometti and his fellow ParisianChinese artist Pang Xunqin, who recalls Picasso painting Sanyu’s portrait around that time.

In 1929, Henri-Pierre Roché, who had already supported the careers of Duchamp, Braque and Brancusi, agreed to be his dealer.

The 1930’s was Sanyu’s most prolifc period and he created a large number of works at Roché’s encouragement. However, this relationship

quickly soured as the artist was heavily infunced by the Chinese traditional literati culture of preserving the integrity and the virtue of creating works for themselves, and not for the sake of money. Roché eventually ended their relationship in 1932, and Sanyu’s continued dismissal of ofers from dealers made it challenging to gain traction within the Parisian art circle. Sanyu in his later years lived a lonely and impoverished life, but the artist continued to develop his unique painting style of merging Chinese artistic concepts with Western techniques, creating minimalist forms with calligrphic brushstrokes. Throughout his life, Sanyu’s personal philosophy to remain true to the Chinese painting tradition cost him a life of poverty, but also enriched his painting style, and the artist today is one of the most celebrated pioneers of Modern Chinese painting.

Since Sanyu’s death in Paris in 1966, the National Museum of History in Taipei has held three retrospective exhibitions of his works.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Sanyu, the National Museum of History held a grand exhibition of over 129 oil paintings. In 2004, the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet held a restrospective show of Sanyu’s 60 works.

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