8. FAMILY IN FRANCE
If the desire to perfect his art had led Yan to leave China in 1938, the meeting and then marriage to Louise Lenoir in 1953 would change the course of his life. He chose to settle in France and start a family there.
Louise Lenoir
Louise et Marianne Yen
In a park in Paris
Family picnics, very popular in the 1950s in France
Louise Yen-Lenoir receiving the Legion of Honor in the courtyard of the Invalides on
March 12, 1980 for her courage during the Second World War. As a member of the Resistance, she was arrested by the Gestapo on March 1, 1944, then sent to a concentration camp until her liberation on May 19, 1945.
Medals received by Louise Lenoir from France, England and the United States.
The rank of second lieutenant was awarded to him at the end of the war
Two things brought Louise and Yan together – their love of art and their commitment against oppression. After graduating from high school, Louise studied drawing and painting, but the sudden death of her father in 1933, the same year that Yan Dehui also lost his father, forced her to give up an artistic career. Their mother tried to earn a living by doing sewing work and the two older sisters, Louise, 20, and Simone, 14, had to work to help her raise the two younger daughters, aged 9 and 8.
Louise first worked as a secretary, one of the few jobs open to women at the time, then, thanks to her meticulousness and her drawing skills, she was recruited by the army’s geographical service to create staff maps.
Involved in the Resistance since 1942, she joined the Comète Network in February 1944. In addition to classic resistance activities such as distributing underground newspapers, she helped to bring airmen parachuted into the occupied zone to safety and again used her drawing skills to produce fake identity cards for fighters wanted by the Nazi regime.
Arrested on denunciation, Louise spent a year in a concentration camp and was liberated by the Allies at the end of the war in 1945. After her return from deportation, she spent a few weeks in Switzerland to recover from the mistreatment and then received a scholarship to study dentistry. After graduating, she worked for a few years in the Paris region before taking over a practice in the provinces in 1957.
Yan built a puppet theater for his daughter, 1959
Bottling of Burgundy wine
Winter holidays in Chamonix, France
Holidays in Saint-Raphaël, South of France
This departure from the family will cut Yan off from the Parisian artistic milieu and will force him to give up an exclusively artistic career to turn to administrative and accounting management activities.
