Born in Guizhou in 1921, Lalan was brought up in a scholarly family, where her gift for music was cultivated from a young age. She trained at the National Art Academy, National Music Academy and Shanghai Music Academy. Lalan moved to Paris in 1948 where she started composing electronic music and later studied modern dance in the Conservatoire nationale supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (Conservatoire de Paris). Driven by passion for visual art, she took up painting after divorcing Zhao Wuji in 1957 and had never ceased painting till an accident took her life in 1995, leaving behind a number of profound and impressive artworks. She has held exhibitions in France, Britain, Denmark since 1960s. After her death, her retrospective exhibitions were widely held in Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau. Standing between two great cultures of Chinese and France, Lalan created splendid paintings that blended the Western abstraction and Chinese landscape while expressing the spirit of a modern woman.