Exhibited: “Lalan-separatudstilling”, Galerie Moderne, Silkeborg, Denmark, 1971, cat. no. 18. Acquired at the exhibition by the present owner's family.

Lalan's work balances on the border between two cultures, and through them, she conveys both the traditions of one of the world's oldest civilizations as well as the forward-looking avant-garde scene of Paris in the second half of the twentieth century.

Born in the Chinese province of Guizhou in 1921, Lalan moves to Paris in 1948 with her spouse at the time, the renowned Chinese artist Zao Wou-Ki. She composes electronic music and studies modern dance, and it is only after the divorce from Wou-Ki in 1956 that the muse becomes a painter herself. However, Lalan travels freely and with great ease between the different artistic genres. The bodily movement and rhythm are translated into a pictorial language, which beautifully combines a kinetic world with a visual one – through the brush's sweeping dance across the canvas.

As the playwright and founder of the French avant-garde theater Eugéne Ionesco writes in the preface to the exhibition catalogue from “Lalan” at Galerie Moderne in Silkeborg, 1971:

"What one can say is that it is very rare for an original artist to emerge. It is rare to be able to confirm the existence of an independent voice and a personal path. It is very rare to be new to non-figurative painting, to have such a strong, such a natural, and such obvious originality as Lalan does. We have a tendency to think that we can no longer create something new, not in this or in any other direction: and then suddenly the new is here, the unexpected. Here is a painter. Here is Lalan.”