He lived in the 14th Arrondissement, not far from where I was staying at the time, and used to visit me. We took long walks along the boulevards and Parc Monsouris. I could see he was an eccentric and a dreamer. He would talk to trees; he talked about “ping-tennis” a game he invented which he was sure would bring him a fortune. I dared not ask how he survived meantime, but I gathered he painted walls and did carpentering.
I was surprised when I visited his studio that it was clean and spacious. White walls were hung with his paintings and shelves held his ceramics. I was immediately struck by their singularity. It was obvious that every piece came from an unique vision, one at once childlike and sophisticated, playful yet profound.
One painting struck me particularly: a whimsical floral still-life, a white vase, flatly outlined against an aubergine background. I loved the way the sides of that vase were silhouetted.
Though I had never before purchased an art-work and was concerned how I would live out the year on my fellowship-grant, I was determined to own it. Seeing my interest, San Yu was happy to make the sale, and insisted on giving me another small painting, an almost abstract goldfish painting.
The following year, 1958, I returned to Paris. I remember he cooked a meal for me in his studio on a Bunsen-burner type of single gas jet, fishing out supplies from sacks which he said were remains of air-lifted supplies from Liberation days!
We spent New Year’s Eve 1958 at the Café Dome, watching people from the heated terrace. We were both rather depressed. He had never stopped dreaming of “making it big” on ping-tennis, but meanwhile I think it was getting more and more difficult for him to survive. Nobody bought his paintings. I don’t remember if that was the last time I saw San Yu.
Shortly after his death, I, by now married and back in New York, was notified that he had left me 2 paintings. I was really surprised and moved that he had remembered me in his last days.
When I received the Lotus painting, I was overwhelmed. It was so typical a San Yu, the restrained and delicate innocence of the flower stems, their stylized composition brought to me the impact of a man who absorbed the essence of the East and the West and made it his own.
As for the little dog in the chair, was he not trying to express his own wishes, to be that pet, a center of attention and in a state of well-being?