Hailing from Szechuan Province, China, Sanyu (常玉) 1895-1966 was among the first generation of Chinese artists to study and settle in Europe. His life and oeuvre was characterised by liminality—a fusion of Eastern and Western traditions, informed by his training in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy and inspired by the new Modernist trends he encountered in Paris that defined his work. After decades of obscurity, both during and after his life, Sanyu is today regarded as one of the most significant and earliest Chinese modernists.

Sanyu departed China for France in 1921, joining the first wave of Chinese artists to study overseas on a government- sponsored programme. After a brief stint in Berlin, he settled permanently in Paris in 1923, where he readily integrated himself into the city's avantgarde scene. While he befriended European artists, notably Alberto Giacometti, he also continued to maintain ties with fellow Parisian-Chinese artists and was a member of the Heavenly Dog Society. A short-lived association in the early 1920s, the Society had been founded by Chinese intellectuals in Europe to promote the introduction of realism into traditional Chinese art, an opinion that greatly differed from the celebration of Impressionism by Shanghai's Heavenly Horse Society.