Singapore
CNN
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Before the ravages of World War II, Paris was the center of the art world. The city’s salons, schools and cafes attracted painters from around the globe, with Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and Salvador Dalí among the many émigrés gravitating to France’s capital during the 1920s and ‘30s.
Artists arriving from Asia, however, faced a very different set of expectations than their European counterparts. Paris may have been a melting pot of foreign cultures (by the standards of the day, at least), but it was also the heart of a colonial empire with a fascination for all things exotic.
“It seems that oil is a medium that is too heavy…
