Born in Szechuan in 1901, . Sanyu first attended the Shanghai Art Academy and went to Japan in 1919. The following year he went to France under the sponsorship of the government to become one of the first Chinese students to study abroad. In his early days in Paris, he became acquainted with Xu Beihong and his wife Jiang Bi-wei, and when he studied life drawings at Grande Chaumiere studio in 1923, he met fellow artist Giacometti. At the time, he frequented local cafes and befriended cultural figures such as Amedeo Modigliani, Foujita Tsugharu, and model Alice Prin, better known as Kiki. Since 1925, Sanyu exhibited his works regularly at the Paris Salons and in various art galleries. There were two Asian artists making their names in the French art circle at the time, one is the Japanese artist Foujita Tsugharu, and the other is Sanyu of China. By the 1930’s, Sanyu was recognized as one of the art contemporaries with his illustrations in the French edition of The Poems of Tao Tsien. His graceful, distinctive painting style, with its authentic oriental manner captured the attention of Parisian art collector, Henri-Pierre Roché, and won praises from artists of his generation.
Sanyu’s works combine qualities of Chinese literati painting and Western modern art, to become his unique style of expression. In his early days in Paris, Sanyu became acquainted with the romantic atmosphere of Paris, and he developed a basic palette of pink, white, and black to form elegant and minimalist imageries. His expressions of calligraphic lines depicted joyfulness. During the war period between 1930’s to 1940’s and the decline of family fortune forced Sanyu into depression. Although his carefree characteristic remained, his works started to own a vague melancholy. In order to support his living, Sanyu went into business of lacquer crafts, and was able to inject influences of folk art into them. He created simple lines on dark background with bold compositions, and continued to adapt nudes, flowers, sceneries, and animals as his themes. In the later years of his life, the impoverishment was projected with nostalgia onto his paintings, when mighty creatures appear tiny and isolated in vase grounds, and the plants in the pots and vases seem frail and sparse, which display the artist’s state of mind at the time.
