Léa Lafugie (11 Feb 1890, Paris 7 — 18 June 1972, Paris 16) was a French explorer, artist and writer, one of the first solo traveler women to sojourn in Tibet, and whose body of work reflects her lasting interest in China and Southeast Asia.
After studying at Paris Ecole des Arts decoratifs (School of Decorative Arts), at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) and Academie Jullian, she started working in fashion illustration, with nude paintings, engravings of hairstyles and portraits of young women displaying the new feminism of the “Roaring Twenties”.
As early as 1924, Léa Lafugie embraced the vocation of “painter-traveler”, wandering through North Africa and holding her first exhibition in Tunis. Inspired by travel writer Alexandra David-Néel (who was to be nicknamed “the Parisian Lady in Lhasa”), she headed to India and Tibet, where she stayed in three occasions: 1926 (Kashmir and Ladakh), 1927 (Darjeeling, Sikkim and Tibet up to Gyantse), and 1931 (Shimla, Spiti Valley, Ladakh, Srinagar). While drawing and painting without a pause, she published her travel notes in renowned outlets, from L’Illustration to Extreme-Asie to the National Geographic, and wrote two books, displaying a noted talent for ethnographical observations in addition to her art.
In 1928 – 1929, she explored successively Shanghai, Burma (now Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia.
A prolific artist, she held in December 1927 an exhibition at the School of Fine Arts of Calcutta with no less than 280 works. She portrayed Tibetan monks, opium users in China — with notations pointing to the fact that she tried it more than once -, Cambodian, Javanese and Burmese dancers, and was also so well-connected that she could paint portraits of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore - who had been portrayed by French artist Andrée Karpelès (Suzanne Karpelès’ sister) in 1920 -, or King Sisowath Monivong in Phnom Penh. (source)
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