Collection of Sanyu works up for auction in Paris
Print Edition
TO mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Chinese-French Painter Sanyu (1901-66), nearly 45 of his works will go under the hammer at Artcurial Auction House on Tuesday in Paris. Sanyu, today recognized as a master in the Western art world, was virtually unknown when he died in his Paris apartment from a gas leak.
The brush drawings come from the personal collection of Jean-Claude Riedel, an art dealer and the person who discovered the artist in the 1970s. This is the largest collection of works on paper by Sanyu. The collection of ink-wash and watercolors focuses on feminine nudes, his signature subject.
Born in 1901 in Sichuan Province, Sanyu’s family owned one of the largest silk-weaving mills in the country at the time. After studying in Shanghai, Sanyu discovered Japan on a trip in 1919 and later France where he decided to settle. From 1923, he set up a base in the Montparnasse area and met several avant-garde artists, members of the Ecole de Paris.
Among the first generation of Chinese artists who came to France, Sanyu immersed himself in French culture. Unlike his compatriots Lin Fengmian and Xu Beihong, he chose to take residence in Paris.
Sanyu’s life was filled with ups and downs, the former Chinese “playboy” was later a poor artist. However, freedom was what the artist pursued all his life. Sanyu preferred to paint when reading the novel “A Dream in Red Mansions” or playing violin at a cafeteria. He showed a particular interest in depicting nudity and began painting nudes on canvas from 1929. Into the 1950s, Henri-Pierre Roche, the collector and art dealer who was also a friend of Brancusi and Duchamp, supported Sanyu. When the artist died in 1966, only a handful of Parisian collectors knew of him. From the mid 1960s, Riedel, then a young art dealer in his 20s, developed a passion for Sanyu. For over 40 years he exhibited the artist’s work in his Parisian gallery.
Starting in the 1990s, Sanyu’s reputation in China and in South East Asia started to grow. Several of his canvases have already sold for millions of US dollars in the Asian market.
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