Arriving in Paris in 1948, officially to study medicine, T'ang Haywen never left France. He discovers a country where creation is in full swing. Like other foreign artists, he confronted Western modernity and, like the first Chinese artists who came to Paris to train, including Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) or Chu Teh-Chun (1920 -2014), he became one of the notable figures of this bustling center of artistic life that was then Montparnasse.

Trained in Western painting, his sketchbooks reveal that he regularly visits Parisian museums, including the Guimet Museum, and that he draws inspiration from the city in urban landscapes sketched quickly with a ballpoint pen. A modern scholar, insatiably curious about Western arts and cultures, he found his vocation as a painter in Paris. A discreet artist, T'ang Haywen is nevertheless gradually asserting himself as a major figure in contemporary creation and Chinese modernity.

Through a selection of around a hundred major works, the exhibition presents an overview of the major stages of his career, as well as the essential facets of the work of an artist who was looking, in his own words, for "a painting ideal, uniting the visible world and the world of thought.

Unpublished creations as well as archival elements, which had been preserved in the secrecy of his workshop, lift a veil on the intimacy of this artist fundamentally in love with freedom and simplicity, reflecting his inclination for oriental asceticism.

The exhibition presents a wide selection from the exceptional donation of 200 works and around 400 pieces from personal archives, made to the Guimet museum in 2022.

Curator: Valérie Zaleski, curator of the Chinese painting and Chinese Buddhist art collections at the Guimet museum.