Xie Jinglan (Lalan) was a Chinese-French artist famous for her innovative abstractions, but also a composer, musician, dancer, and poet who presented multidisciplinary projects. She was a pioneering female artist who devised an unusual media synthesis.
Read MoreBorn into an academic family, Lalan learnt music at a young age, and studied it further at the Hangzhou School of Art in 1937, where she met her future husband, the abstract painter Zao Wou-Ki. In 1941, they married.
After the war against the Japanese and at the suggestion of their teacher Lin Fengmian, they left China and moved to Montparnasse in Paris in 1948, because Zao wanted to take classes with Émile Othon Friesz, a Fauve painter. There they befriended a coterie of artists and composers, including Pierre Soulages, Georges Mathieu, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Michaux, and Edgard Varèse, the latter teaching and mentoring her in musical composition.
Lalan continued her study of music and dance at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and was very impressed by a documentary of the American dancer Martha Graham, so she learned the Graham Technique at the American Cultural Centre. She also collaborated with filmmaker Chris Marker. A strong personality, she played a big role in her husband's painting decisions and titling.
The couple left their son in China with Lalan's parents, were divorced in the mid-1950s, and had separate careers. She soon remarried the sculptor Marcel Van Thienen, moved to the northern Parisian suburb of St. Ouen, took up painting, and changed her name from Lanlan to Lalan. Her son rejoined her later in Paris in 1979.
Lalan's early paintings reflect her interest in Art Informel and her passion for music and dancing with their use of rhythm, gestural calligraphy, and bodily symbolism. She often used saturated coloured and combined spray paint with gestural brush application.
In the 1970s she was inspired by Taoist philosophy and the traditional Chinese painting of the Song and Yuan dynasties. Her work became lighter, more intricate, softer, atmospheric, and understated, and at the Galeries Jacques Desbrières and Iris Clert she presented her paintings as backdrops for choreographed dance performances accompanied by her electronic music.
In the 1980s Lalan and her husband moved to Bormes-les-Mimosas in southern France, where she concentrated on her painting. In 1995 she made a film on solo dance entitled Dance of Qidong, blending Chinese culture with modernist dance movements, meditation, and breathing exercises. A week later she died tragically in a car accident.
Lalan has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo exhibitions include Extended Figure: The Art and Inspiration of Lalan, Asia Society Hong Kong Center (2021); Between Dream and Drama – Works of Lalan, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2020); Lalan: Endless Dance, Sotheby's S|2 Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); The Cosmic Dance of the Paintbrush, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand (2018); Singing in Colours and Dancing in Ink: Retrospective Exhibition of Lalan (1958–94), Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2017); Dance Melodies in Colours: Paintings by Lalan, University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong (2011); and My Vision of Paradise – Retrospective of Lalan's Art, Shanghai Art Museum (2009).
Recent group exhibitions include The Cornerstone, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2021); Signifiants de l'informel 2020, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Chai Wan (2020); Rue du Moulin Vert, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong (2018); and Breeze from Paris, Eslite Gallery, Taipei (2014).
Lalan's work is held in the collections of several major institutions, including the Culture Ministry of France; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; China Art Museum; and Macau Museum of Art.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2021
