Born in Xiamen in 1927, Tang Haiwen moved to Saigon, Vietnam during the Sino-Japanese War with his family, where he attended a French school and studied calligraphy under his grandfather. His passion in painting continued to flourish after he moved to Paris in 1949. Like many of his contemporaries who immersed themselves in France at the time such as Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-ki, Tang found Abstract Expressionism a perfect channel to demonstrate the subtleties in traditional Chinese painting through pure non-figurative elements of colour, light and composition. Specializing in creating calligraphic works in ink in which black and white, void and solid, abstract and realistic are juxtaposed in ever-changing compositional balances, Tang demonstrate an essence of Chinese philosophy and endeavours to reflect the infinitive power of the universe. Through the use of fluid and forceful lines of his brush, he depicts the gradation and permeability of ink on paper and the feeling of both simplicity and spaciousness in compositions. Tang chooses to produce works of diptychs and triptychs to illustrate the concept of duality and multiplicity within the singular; and the unity of parts within the whole. This representation of the perpetual, changing force of life and the cosmos, harks to Laozi's saying of ""The Way (or Dao) emerges as one; one was multiplied into two, then into three, then into myriads of things on Earth." Tang had established himself as a calligrapher by instinct and strived to inject new life and meaning into tradition through works that construct personal metaphorical realms distinctly rooted in Chinese culture yet displays transformative innovation that transcends time and nationalities.

"Born out of the juxtaposition of two sheets that the work combined as one, it was vast enough to enclose the world. From then on, Tang came to master a tool that suited his binary Taoist vision. The tone was preferably serious, deep, sparse. The painter no longer was satisfied with embracing reality in order to transcribe it. He constructed a very personal metaphorical realm. This process, surging from the depths of his being, was embodied in poetic transpositions worthy of the greatest creators of the twentieth century. However, due to his organic vision of the world, he set himself apart from his contemporaries by staying a calligrapher by instinct and metaphysician by taste." (Jean-Paul Desroches, T'ang Haiwen: Paths of Ink, Editions de la Pointe, Paris, 2002, p. 34)