Tang Haiwen

signed in Chinese and pinyin, framed

Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner

Left side with all four corners dog-eared. Bottom right corner with a 7cm fold, 2.5cm of which has torn. Three vertical tears to the top edge, approx 2cm., 2.5cm., and 2cm. Piece of paper adhered to the centre, approx 8mm. Right side again with all four corners dog-eared. Tear to the bottom edge in the bottom right corner, approx 1.2cm. Two short tears to the top edge, approx 5cm. A number of minor areas of paint loss, the largest in the centre, approx 9mm.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Tang was born in 1927 to a wealthy family of Amoy, now Xiamen, an island located in the Formosa Strait, along the Fujian coast of Southern China. When war broke out in Asia in 1937, his family moved to Cholon, the Chinese district of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. In 1943 he started at the French school in Saigon, and at this early stage in his life he was already drawing pencil portraits on the pages of his French-Chinese dictionary.

His grandfather, the son of a member of the imperial administration taught him calligraphy according to the cursive script, the academic and regular standard, and he used to fill his spare time reading books and newspapers. Vietnam was then a French colony, and his teachers suggested that he be sent to France to complete his studies. In 1946 his family granted him permission to make his second migration. His move to France eventually saw him join a group of artists that included Pan Yuliang, Chang Yu, Zhao Wuji and Zhu Dequn who all left China to study in Europe. 

Tang attended Paris University and in 1949 received a degree in French Civilization with honours. He also attended French literature and Oriental language classes, and briefly attended medical school. He soon abandoned the conventional studies imposed by his family to join the Parisian post-war art world which was bursting with energy. Art quickly became a way of life for him: he began taking drawing lessons at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and started acting in the touring shows of the Antique Drama group of the Sorbonne. Driven by a natural curiosity and an independent mind, he visited art galleries and museums, and after a while taught himself to paint with oils, first producing portraits, still-lifes and landscapes in a figurative manner applying the rule of perspective.

The dexterity of his hand, trained by calligraphy, as well as a definitive gift for observation, enabled him to progress quickly in the techniques of western painting. However, even in the early stages, his creations conveyed a typically Chinese atmosphere and sense of space. He produced nostalgic pieces about China, serigraphs and small watercolours on rice paper in which the calligraphic line becomes more and more obvious. He was naturally talented and was quickly noticed, particularly by Suzanne de Conninck who exhibited some of his very first paintings in her gallery on Rue de Seine.

He started travelling extensively across Europe and the USA. On his travels he kept a painted diary of the impressions triggered by landscapes. By this time he had mastered the western styles and even if he was still using oil paints, found a greater freedom of expression in watered-down gouache, watercolours and ink. This choice suited his nature: he saw himself as a Taoist and practiced painting as a way of self-fulfilment.

These works record fleeting impressions; fast sketches rather than faithful renderings that recorded his journeys around the world.  The spontaneity of his brushstrokes are evident in these vivid works made day after day: his brush transcribing the vital energy inherent to each place he depicted.

He once wrote, "Painting can only evolve from some degree of concrete figuration. Thus it can regenerate itself without losing itself and spread within the areas of affectivity and spirituality" His work was therefore inspired by the reality he saw around him: landscapes, forests, and the sky.

During the 1960s he progressively discarded his early influences such as Gauguin, Cézanne and Matisse to rediscover his Oriental roots. He began to read Chinese classics regularly, in particular, Recorded Remarks on Painting by Shitao; the Garden as Big as a Mustard Seed, and the Daodejing: books that he kept by his bedside throughout his life. He returned to painting with ink, exploring its possibilities and increasingly looked back to the expressive works of the early Chinese painting from the Song through to the Qing dynasties, finding key inspiration in the works of Shitao. His respect for tradition was evident in this choice of medium, which had been regarded ink as the paramount medium since the end of the 9^th century. He did not however give up colour but chose to mix the Chinese tradition of the abstract wash with the more lyrical, luminous style of the West.

His large diptychs portrayed abstract landscapes in ink on paper - again a traditional material - with a fibrous surface, reacting to the most delicate inflexions or the strongest of accents. He painted in series, always using standard sizes of paper or cardboard surfaces, which allowed him to paint quickly and no longer concern himself with the issue of format. It also bestowed upon his work a unifying consistency at the same time as separating him from the painters of his generation.

The western form of the diptych formed a dynamic frame for the artist, and suited his binary Taoist vision. In an interview Tang declared, "I am trying to ignore the conscious world, to reach beyond it and explore new shapes, always linked to nature and its rhythms. I am trying to identify with nature's forces and to materialise them through painting." The scale of his large diptychs assigned a unique space to this expression, fully identifiable and enabling all kinds of experiments.

In Tang's later life his ink painting became lighter and swifter, its structure comprising a wash punctuated by dots and lines, the landscapes departing even further from reality.

Since his death in 1991, there have been three major exhibitions of Tang's work. The first, The Tao of Painting, took place at the Musée Océanographique de Monaco in 1996. In 1997, Taipei's Fine Art Museum organised a large retrospective that was unanimously acclaimed by the Asian press and was heavily attended. In 1999, the Musée de Pontoise held a show entitled Masters of Ink, which included the work of two other Chinese 20^th Century masters: Zhang Daqian and Zhao Wuji.

Throughout his life as an artist he exhibited his work often, but practiced the Taoist principles of production without possession and of action without self-assertion. A gifted artist with an exceptional creative instinct, Tang justifiably ranks among the great Chinese artists of the 20^th century.

This group of paintings is from the collection of one of Tang Haiwen's great friends and main sponsors throughout his life in Paris.

With excerpts from T'ang Haywen, les chemins de l'encre, paths of ink