The moving art of Lalan

She bloomed in her adopted country of France while retaining a Chinese cultural core. Chitralekha Basu reports on a retrospective show of Lalan at Asia Society Hong Kong Center.

Born Xie Jing-lan in Guiyang, China, in 1921, Lalan turned to painting only in her mature years. And her works were not seen as high-value collectibles until some years after her death in a car accident in 1995.

"Lalan was under her first husband Zao Wou-ki's shadow," says S. Alice Mong, executive director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center, where a retrospective show of the Chinese-French artist's works is taking place.

Having a famous, and sought-after, painter for a partner may not always be the ideal setup for a woman who is herself artistically inclined. And so it was with Lalan.

Eventually, she separated from the husband with whom she had shared a school (Hangzhou National College of Art, now China Academy of Art) and settled down in Paris — looking to absorb some of the finest artistic ideas, and techniques, circulating in Europe's cultural nerve center in the postwar years.

She would marry the musician and sculptor Marcel Van Thienen in 1958. And yet, it wouldn't be until the 1970s when Lalan, who studied music at Hangzhou and trained in the Martha Graham technique of dance after arriving in Paris in 1948, began combining her skills — in music, dance and wielding the brush — and giving performances to small groups of audiences in community cultural centers.

"Lalan integrated the arts," says Mong. "Nowadays we take integrated art for granted, but she was doing that in the 1970s."