T’ang Haywen was a Chinese-born French artist who became known for his small-format paintings, which are composed of a few fluid brushstrokes in Chinese ink on paper. He was born in Xiamen, China in 1927, but following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he spent his childhood growing up in Saigon, Vietnam. He left for Paris in 1947 with the intention of studying medicine but upon arrival, immersed himself in Parisian culture visiting museums and important landmarks. Over the course of his life, he travelled extensively throughout Europe and the United States, never returning to Asia. Along the way, he held various exhibitions in North America and Europe. He passed away in 1991.
In 1998, Alisan Fine Arts was the first gallery to hold a solo selling exhibition of T’ang Haywen’s paintings in Hong Kong and since then has included his work in four group exhibitions. Notably, as part of Le French May 2005, his artworks, along with Gao Xingjian and Jean Degottex were displayed at the University Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Hong Kong in an exhibition curated by gallery founder Alice King.
Since 1990s, his works were on view at significant exhibitions worldwide, including a retrospective toured Oceanographic Museum, Monaco; Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne, Germany; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1996 -1997; joint exhibition with Zhang Daqian and Zao Wou-ki, Musée Ponthieu, France, 1999-2000; Ink Dreams: Selected Artworks from the INK Foundation Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2021. In recent years, solo exhibitions have been held at Guimet Museum (2002, 2024), and Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambery, France (2002).
His works have been collected by the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris; Musée Cernuschi, Paris; Musée Guimet, Paris; Musée de Pontoise, France; Museum of Contemporary Art, Nice, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Menil Foundation, Houston, USA; M+, Hong Kong.
