Ahh, Paris, once home to forever greats such as Duchamp, Picasso, and Chagall. However, at the same time that these Europeans lived and breathed in the City of Lights, did you know that Asian artists like Foujita Tsuguharu, Georgette Chen, and Liu Kang also worked there too?
From 2 April to 17 August 2025, as part of its 10th-anniversary lineup, join the National Gallery Singapore as it presents City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920-1940s, a groundbreaking exhibition that challenges conventional art history narratives.
Following in the spirit of its predecessor—a comparative exhibition between Latin America and Southeast Asia—this curation seeks to examine the relationships between the French capital city’s local and migrant artists, how each influenced the other’s work, as well as how the cultural shifts of interwar Paris affected the artistries of these Asians.
So, with over 200 artworks—including paintings, sculptures, and lacquerware—and 200 archival materials neatly divided across six sections, join me as I go through a guided tour of this exhibition and learn from its curators about what it truly means to navigate Paris as ‘Others’ in such a fascinating and dynamic period.
Preface
The exhibition opens with Preface, where Dr. Phoebe Scott, the lead curator of the exhibition present for this early look, took some time to explain the exhibit’s theme.
Since the Gallery wanted to reframe the usual narrative of Paris and its art, the exhibit’s tagline (City of Others) was intentionally designed not to evoke French influences. Instead, it sought to capture the city in the eyes of migrants—whose populations surged in the French capital after World War I—as a place to meet each other.
As for the period from which the exhibit starts, Dr. Scott explained that the 1920s were a period of extreme diversity in modern art otherwise known as the Années folles (crazy years). However, despite being reestablished as a capital for the arts, there was a dark side to the city too, for Paris was also the colonial capital of the French empire.
Therefore, when the two reputations of France mixed and the artists of Asia came to the country, they encountered multiple boundaries about what they could create, such as the expectation by French audiences that they would only make Chinoiserie goods.
Soon, Asian artists had centered in certain zones of Paris where their differing styles were tolerated, for these ethnic enclaves offered opportunities for work and exhibition, as well as strong connections to back home. Thus, Wang Ziyun’s Map of Paris serves as the perfect introduction to this preface: a literal remapping of the French capital through the lens of an Asian artist.
After that, the exhibition introduces visitors to the different ways in which Asian artists in Paris presented themselves to European audiences through one particular method.
Through the creation of their image, whether by self or others, portraits helped artists like Georgette Chen and Foujita Tsuguharu—whose artworks we’ll both see more of in later sections—to shape the public image of themselves as creatives whilst grappling with being the ‘Other’ as migrants from Asia.
Workshop to the World
While there was a well-established demand for Asian art in Paris prior to the 1920s, the taste for these works truly skyrocketed when the Art Déco movement further ignited interest in the ‘exotic,’ inspiring a wave of lacquerware, fashion, and jewellery by both local and migrant artistans. As the first section of the exhibit, Workshop to the World delves deep into the influences and contributions of Asia on the Art Déco movement, showcased through products of East and West.
One mentioned medium that was especially popular among Asian artisans was the sleek and luxurious lacquer. As Japanese lacquer artists collaborated with French designers while also making their own distinctive works, one-quarter of Indochinese migrants in Paris were also working in the city as lacquerers.
Immediately, I was captured by the works of a certain pre-eminent lacquer artist in Paris during the Art Déco period: Jean Dunand. A Swiss-born artist renowned for his varied and experimental work, he first learnt the rudiments of lacquer technique from Sogawara Seizo in 1912, only increasing his production dramatically however with the growth of his Vietnamese workforce in the 1920s, many of whom came from traditional lacquer-producing areas.
Here, I got a glimpse of Dunand’s gold-and-silver-lacquered Le Forêt (The Forest)—an immense six-metre-long folding screen that stands at three-metres tall—against a wall graphic of La Conquête du cheval (The Conquest of the Horse), a sight only made possible with the help of his workers.
Despite certain lacquer artists like Jean utilising the movement to gain acclaim and exhibits under their own names though, others like the highly skilled Vietnamese labourers of Dunand’s atelier workforce unfortunately worked through it all as uncredited workers
Fortunately, thanks to newly uncovered archival documentations and the Gallery’s determination to recognise the efforts of all artists, the exhibit will display several photographs and profiles of this talented team, giving them the credit they finally deserve.
What really stuck out to me, though, was why these Vietnamese artistans were documented: as colonial subjects and part of the working class, these labourers were prone to leftist radicalisation and hence had to be politically surveilled, which I felt was truly Orwellian.
Besides teaching Jean, Sougawara Seizo also taught Hamanaka Katsu, a newly arrived Japanese artist who quickly gained a reputation in Paris for his flair in lacquer. Rejecting repetitive and clichéd ‘Oriental’ imagery, some of his innovative designs featuring Greco-Roman mythology and striking geometry are also on display.
Finally, at the center of this section are several pieces from Maison Cartier inspired by Asian aesthetics, including one ‘portique’ gravity clock made from nephrite jade, lacquer, and black enamel and crafted to resemble a Japanese Shinto gate.
Since Louis Cartier—grandson of the Maison Cartier’s original founder—was an art lover whose collection included Ryuku lacquerware and Chinese porcelain, him and his designers were some of the most notable Parisians to creatively reinterpret these influences into French luxury goods like this clock, setting the stage for how Asian art would come to be received by local audiences.
Theatre of the Colonies
Next, as I entered through a gate and into the next section, I spotted what looked to be a photo of the Angkor Wat on my left. Or at least, that’s what I supposedly thought I saw. In fact, it’s a French replica of the Angkor Wat in Paris made for the International Colonial Exposition of 1931, an exhibition celebrating the ideology of colonialism and the spoils of the various colonial powers.
This photograph, along with other artefacts in Theatre of the Colonies, explores the socio-political tensions in the colonial capital of a sprawling French empire during the peak of its colonial rule. Just as there were people who supported ‘Greater France’, there were also people who were fiercely against it.
One notable anti-colonial artist-activist was future Vietnamese leader Hồ Chí Minh, whose newspaper cartoons satirised the Colonial Exposition by illustrating how the French masters brutally dealing with their colonial subjects. Alongside these, subscription cards are also displayed, allowing Parisians to support anti-colonial movements by paying 1 Franc.
However, just as the two sides fought, there also existed those caught between the crossfire. Newly graduated Vietnamese students of the École de Beaux Arts de l’Indochine (School of the Fine Arts of Indochina) in Hanoi, for example, also had their works exhibited in the Colonial Exposition as a way to show the colonial education system’s successes. Such works included Lê Phổ’s L’âge heureux (The Happy Age), an ironic and melancholic depiction of a group of women and children along a river’s edge, as well as statues in both marble and wood.
While it is difficult to know how Vietnamese artists like Lê Phổ truly felt about their work being presented in such a setting, it is clear that they used the opportunity of having their nation’s modern art internationally exposed to showcase its evolution, as well as to develop careers outside of the colonial framework.
Therefore, as Paris became a site for both colonial and anti-colonial agendas, art was activated as a medium of propaganda to support each respective narrative–a war of visuals which Theatre of the Colonies captures in all of its glory.
As a final note, be sure to turn around once you’ve walked past the gate for a majestic surprise.
Spectacle and Stage
During the 1920s to 1940s, Asian dance was an exuberant contact zone in Paris, often straddling a fine line between exoticism, caricature, and cultural identity. Thus, with the help of archival materials and film clips, the third section, Spectacle and Stage, explores where exactly that line lies by providing an expanded context for Asian dancers in the French capital.
While these culturally rich dances were a source of pride and profit for many migrants, they were also linked to a dark history of colonialism and exploitation, especially through the troupes that appeared at the Colonial Exposition, where they were often presented as outlandish spectacles or ethnographic curiosities.
Moreover, by the 1920s, when Asian dance was also featured in popular venues, the quality of presentations differed greatly across each nightclub, music hall, and theatre. While some reduced the dance form to mere caricatures, others instead offered migrant dancers opportunities to experiment, leading to the development of new choreography that referenced traditional practices in a modern style.
Through footage of dancers like Raden Mas Jodjana of Indonesia, Uday Shankar of India, Komori Toshi of Japan, and European dancer of colour Nyoka Inyoka, this section enables audiences to view this fascinating evolution in Asian artform.
Sites of Exhibition
The next section, Sites of Exhibition, has a title that needs no explanation. Drawn by the promise of prestige, many migrant artists started to see Paris as a proving ground with its complex landscape of commercial galleries, museum exhibitions, and large-scale, juried public shows known as salons.
One such venue was the Jeu de Paume, an arts center dedicated to foreign artists and schools like Japanese and Chinese ink wash painters, one of the earliest styles of Asian contemporary art staged in Europe.
However, according to Ms. Horikawa Lisa, another curator and the presenter for this section, although both countries received significant recognition previously unheard of for their showcases of serene landscapes and flowing fauna, their respective administrations differed greatly in reception.
While the Japanese government offered great support to its exhibit, the Chinese government meanwhile offered so little to the point where one artist featured almost put his efforts into other parts of the show. In fact, one of the Chinese works wasn’t even painted by a traditional artist but rather one trained in France, though only those trained in Eastern art can see the subtle absorption of Western techniques into the ink, which most French and Europeans audiences were obviously not.
Speaking of Japanese artists, catch Itakulla Kanae’s《赤衣の女》(Woman in Red Dress), the iconic artwork featured in the key visual for City of Others here, portraying the artist and his wife Sumiko as the central anchor of its composition—seated, with impressionable eyes and a vibrant red dress.
As Ms. Lisa notes, the realistic depiction of Sumiko’s hands yet stylistic approach to the overall figure and background are also hallmarks of the Return to Order movement, an artistic reaction to World War I that rejected the avant-garde and instead emphasised representational painting, suggesting that Kanae had incorporated Western elements into his otherwise Eastern work.
Even if Kanae and Sumiko’s artistic developments were cut short by premature deaths at 28 and 25 respectively, I found it touching that their works faced each other on opposite ends of the gallery, reunited after so many years.
Do also check out the displayed works of Korean and Taiwanese painters whose artistic voices and visions were shaped by Japan’s colonial rule. Though they participated in the Association des artistes japonais (Association of Japanese Artists) and were grouped as Japanese artists in salon listings, their works often said otherwise by showcasing local traditions and Western techniques.
For example, in Pai Un-Soung’s 귀가 (Returning Home), a man on horseback is dressed in a traditional Korean hanbok complete with a characteristic gat hat, implying that the scene takes place in his homeland. Furthermore, as the first Korean painter to study and work extensively in Europe, Pai’s skill with the brush was undeniable, evidently so after a light was shined through the painting and it was discovered that the seemingly-layered background of snow was instead only one thin layer.
And since we’re talking about techniques, catch a glimpse into the working method of Vũ Cao Đàm with an unintentional double-sided work featuring Le Mandarin (The Mandarin) on one page and A study of two young women on the other.
A graduate of the École de Beaux Arts de l’Indochine mentioned earlier, Vũ Cao Đàm migrated to Paris in 1931 and, by the end of the decade, had established himself as a successful sculptor and painter.
Having been exhibited at the Salon d’automne and a myriad of other smaller galleries, a work on a subject similar to Le Mandarin was exhibited at the Salon of Independent Artists, an achievement which unfortunately cannot be said for the eccentric image of the two women, thus providing a nice juxtaposition between the literal double-sided style of Vũ Cao Đàm, as well as what he thought was worth exhibiting.
Last but not least, this section ends off with artwork from local artists Georgette Chen and Liu Kang from their time in Paris prior to their arrival in Singapore.
Georgette Chen arrived in Paris in 1927 to continue her formal artistic training and quickly adapted to her studies at the Académie Colarossi and other independent academies, thanks to a fluency in French from an early childhood spent in the same city.
Her professional debut came in 1930 when two of her paintings were accepted at the Salon d’automne, and in 1936, Chen held her first solo exhibition at Galerie Barreiro. Showcasing 42 works inspired by a painting trip to Provence with her former Colarossi teacher, Charles Picart e Doux, a wonderful collection of them alongside pictures of the exhibition are displayed in this section.
As for Liu Kang, after graduating from the Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in 1928, the Fujian-born artist would then spend the next three years painting in Paris, drawing on Favuist and post-Impressionism influences in his artistic practice clearly seen from the strong colours and bold brushwork in View of Sacre Couer.
The artist wasn’t alone though, being accompanied by his teacher, Liu Haisu, and his friend, Chen Jen Hao, forming a close-knit artistic circle who travelled, painted and exhibited together, eventually leaving a lasting impact in the works we’re more familiar with in the permanent exhibitions of the National Gallery Singapore.
Featuring some of Liu Kang’s vibrant watercolour and gouche paintings, these works not only capture the spirit of France but also served as experimentations influenced by talks he had with local artists like Henri Matisse. Additionally, photographs of Liu Kang and those taken by him are also exhibited, including one cute group photo that resembles a modern-day wefie.
Studio and Street
Daily life was a regular source of inspiration for the artists of Paris. Many artists made work reflecting the streetscapes in which they lived and the people they encountered. One such area was the Montparnasse district, and hence the fifth section, Studio and Street, highlights the impact of its studios, informal and progressive art schools, and cafés that encouraged artists to congregate.
This section starts with perhaps the most famous school in Montparnasse, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which focused on drawing and sketching academy figures. As many artists from the 1920s to the 1930s disregarded the national academies like the École des Beaux-Arts in favour of going to independent schools and studios, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière is still widely regarded by many to be the birthplace of modernist arts education.
However, there is one artist who did study at both schools. A woman of Indian and Hungarian heritage, Amrita Sher-Gil positioned herself as both an insider because of her participation in the French modernist art scene and an outsider because of her ethnic difference with the locals, engaging in European modernism whilst questioning its premises.
The painter’s untitled portrait, displayed next to photographs taken by her father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, depicts a woman, likely Romani or Hungarian, wrapped in a striking red shawl, a presence imbued with both intimacy and quiet strength. With a gaze that neither submits nor invites, the woman reflects Amrita’s own complex negotiation of selfhood, asserting her identity in a city that sought to define her through the exotic stereotypes she both leveraged and defied.
Here, I’m also introduced to Sanyu, one of the earliest Chinese artists to study in Paris. Through extensive life drawing practice at the Grande Chaumière, as seen in a series of figure drawings exhibited in this section, he developed a distinct formal language of illustrating the female nude, best exemplified in his oil painting,《仰卧裸女》(Reclining Pink Nude with Raised Arms).
Using a neutral palette, Sanyu created an almost flat space, with the pink hue of the figure exhibiting minimal tonal variation. The subtle contrast between the figure and background also allows them to blend harmoniously, emphasising the delicate nuances of the figure’s contours. The most striking detail, however, is the subject’s face, where succinct strokes capture her bobbed hairstyle and red lips, all while Chinese decorative emblems subtly reference Art Déco influences.
Last but not least, the section exhibits Foujita Tsuguharu, a celebrity of Montparnasse and complex figure in modern Japanese painting. Spending the majority of his artistic career in Paris before his controversial role as a propaganda artist during the second Sino-Japanese war, Tsguharu’s work, Nu couché (Lying Nude), created in 1931—his last year in Paris—showcases his signature thin, fine brushwork.
As for its materials, the painting is comprised of Japanese sumi ink on a smooth, self-primed surface, the precise preparation method of which remained a mystery…until now. After years of extensive research by conservators, one theory that has recently arisen suggests that Tsuguharu may have incorporated plaster into his canvas base, creating the distinct flat texture that defined his work.
Thus, alongside Sanyu and Tsuguharu’s paintings, this section ends off with nude works by Polish-French painter Moise Kisling and Vũ Cao Đàm too, resulting in an intriguing comparison between Eastern and Western artists about how they portrayed the female body.
Aftermaths
The final section of the exhibit, Aftermaths, focuses on how World War II brought an end to the many distinctive cultural features of Paris from the 1920s to the 1940s. In France, the art world grappled with the trauma of the war and the guilty of complicity during the Nazi Occupation. Meanwhile, in the colonies overseas, brutal wars of decolonisation forced migrant artists to pick between going home or staying back in Paris.
As movements like the Return to Order became ‘tainted,’ what would the artists of Paris focus on next? To that question, the exhibit responds by positioning Wilfredo Lam’s La Lettre III (The Letter III) and Hua Tianyou’s Le Bombardement (The Bombardment) to face each other, inviting visitors to stand in between them.
La Lettre III is a painting that likely references Wilfredo Lam’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War, where he fought before arriving in Paris in 1938. As a depiction of a woman grieving upon learning of a death in battle (most likely a husband or son), the mask-like treatment of her face dramatises the moment, though that could also relate to Lam’s new circle in Paris.
There in the City of Others, the Cuban-Congolese-Chinese artist had befriended influential artists like Pablo Picasso and André Breton, both of whom starstruck him with their use of African aesthetics, causing Lam to revisit his own intimate knowledge of Afro-Cuban culture. Later in life, though, he reflected critically on this dynamic, stating that his painting was “an act of decolonisation not in a physical sense but in a mental one.”
Opposite La Lettre III, Le Bombardement by Hua Tianyou stands tall, a vivid yet grim sculpture inspired by the battle of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War, a city located near his native province of Jiangsu.
This powerful representation of a mother fleeing with her children was an all too common sight during the war, as Japanese pilots frequently bombed civilian populations, killing innocent bystanders and displacing hundreds in the process. Personally, upon looking at this sculpture, I was immediately reminded of H. S. Wong’s Bloody Saturday, a photograph that, while not featured in this exhibit, was one that also captured the same brutal destruction left upon Shanghai by the Japanese in their wage of war.
Therefore, by contrasting these two tragic pieces of work together, the exhibit highlights their shared similarities in depicting profound loss, the onset of war, and the effects of both on family life.
In regards to decolonisation, the exhibit focuses largely on the First Indochina War from 1946 to 1954, playing Mai Trung Thứ’s film reportage of the official by Hồ Chí Minh—now president of Vietnam—visiting Paris in 1946 to negotiate for Vietnamese independence.
Additionally, a video explores the nuanced experiences of a Vietnamese artist whose writings expressed the idea of a migrant being not just about leaving, but also coming back. Specifically, the contents on the three screens explore her arrival back in Vietnam from Paris, revealing the complexities of returning and being welcomed back with not only with joy and excitement but also trepidation and resentment.
As the exhibition draws to a close, melancholic expressions of Sanyu and Foujita Tsuguharu through paint and photography, respectively, are featured on the walls, before one has to open a door and come face to face in the present with Fishing for the Air of Paris: a sculpture consisting of a fishing polesticking out from a blue window.
On one end, what seems to be a cobweb or the bamboo frames of a nón lá (Vietnamese conical hat). On the other end, a weave of surgical masks, subtly implying how the work was created during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting the artist’s longing to be a part of the outside world. Additionally, the glass vial hanging off said weave is a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s Paris Air, whose anti-aesthetic work, I was told, inspired the artist.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the exhibition, Dr. Scott ended the guided tour with these poignant words: “Where do we find our identities in a globalised world? A hundred years ago, these questions were relevant. Now, they’re still as important.”
Though simple in nature, these words perfectly encapsulated the nuanced narratives and intricate themes presented throughout the exhibition, deeply resonating with me. If the answer was anything that the exhibit told me, I’d have to say we’ll find our identities within ourselves. After all, none of the ‘Others’ were spoonfed their connections and exhibitions. All of them made the conscious decision to move to Paris, and if they wanted money or fame or connections or all three, they sought it out in the districts of Montparnasse and Montmartre, in the art schools, and wherever else in the City where they could live their passions.
Thus, in an era where more and more Singaporeans are immigrating across the globe for a better education, job, or even just quality of life, City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s is a sensible yet hopeful exhibition that’s needed now more than ever to remind us about the two things that can make us feel like home, no matter where we are: the beauty of our art and others, as well as the relationships we make between us and others.
Exhibition Details
Even with everything I’ve mentioned here, there are so many more artworks, along with their artists and contexts, that I just didn’t have the time to cover. So, if you’d like to find out more about the Asian artists of Paris, make a visit to the National Gallery today! Additionally, for more information about the wealth of programmes happening alongside City of Others, check out the National Gallery Singapore’s website.
🗓️Date: 2 April to 17 August 2025
📍Location: Level 3, Singtel Special Exhibition Galleries 1, 2 & 3, City Hall Wing, National Gallery, Singapore 178957
💲Price: S$15 (From 17 February to 16 April, use code NGSCOO10 for 33% off!)
⏰Time: 10am to 7pm
Finally, do use the hashtag #CityOfOthersNGS when you post about your visit for a chance at being reposted on the National Gallery Singapore’s Instagram and TikTok!
Photos by Russell Loh and Zheng Yi of the DANAMIC team. Additional visuals courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.
