Artist's studio

Initially, from 1948, T’ang resided in a hotel in Paris’ Latin Quarter. Raymond Audy recalls seeing him make his first screen printing frames in that hotel. Later he rented rooms in the homes of hospitable friends. Pierre Chaslin recounts how in 1953 he and T’ang shared one floor of a house in the south of Paris belonging to a very singular couple, the Ginzburgs, who subsisted on payments from estranged relatives. The arrival of their monthly allowance gave rise to a week-long party followed by three weeks of subsistence living. T’ang painted an interior scene featuring an open window of the Meudon house.

From 1959 until 1991, T'ang lived and worked in his small Parisian apartment-studio in the rue Liancourt, close to Montparnasse. He paid a very low rent but was obliged to shower in a neighbour’s apartment while the toilet was in the landing above. In this place he constructed a world that he would rediscover whenever he returned from his frequent travels. Here he received visits from close friends and often would offer his home to others when away.

T’ang painted every day, wherever he might be, whether on the beach in Goa, at St Paul de Vence (near Nice), at Hergiswil (Switzerland) or in the Abbey of Fontgombault. He painted as one might write a travel journal, the four walls of the studio in rue Liancourt being for him just another step in the journey.

The last known photo-portrait of T’ang was taken in rue Liancourt (as shown below), in the Spring of 1991, by his filmmaker friend Yonfan, who had made the project to exhibit T’ang’s work in Hong Kong.