T’ang Haywen

(Chinese/French, 1927–1991)

T'ang Haywen was a Chinese-French painter notable for his melding of Abstract Expressionist aesthetics with the traditional techniques of Chinese ink-brush painting. Born in 1927 in Xiamen,China, the artist was instilled with the spiritual tenets of Taoism from a young age by his grandfather. In 1937, T’ang and his family moved to Vietnam to escape the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. Moving to Paris in 1948 to study medicine, he instead enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. Shortly after his studies, T’ang’s work found favor among the avant-garde artists in Paris of the time. He had his first exhibition in 1955 at the Galerie Voyelles, and was exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989. The artist died on September, 1991 in Paris, France. Posthumously, his work was exhibited at the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco in 1996 and the Shiseido Foundation in Tokyo in 2002.