As the Ground Holds: Four Artists and Their Parisian Roots

Description

Villepin’s As the Ground Holds brings together Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Zenzaburō Kojima, Lê Phổ and Mai Trung Thứ — four artists who lived and worked in Paris during the 20th century, a pivotal period in the development of modernism. Moving through shared networks of studios, salons and émigré communities, each developed a distinct practice grounded not in rupture but in continuity.

Rather than adopting modernism wholesale, these artists extended its language through inherited materials, techniques and sensibilities. For Vietnamese artists Lê and Mai, silk becomes a site where memory and form quietly persist. Kojima’s later role in the development of modern Japanese oil painting reshaped the relationship between Western technique and traditional Japanese aesthetics. Foujita, meanwhile, emerged as a defining figure of the École de Paris. Together, their works trace a more expansive, transnational understanding of modernism shaped by movement, exchange and enduring artistic identity.