Liu Haisu 刘海粟(1896-1994) sought throughout his life to integrate the pictorial traditions of Europe and East Asia. He introduced to China the stylistic trends in Europe in the 1920s, when he opened one of the first schools of modern art and visited Japan twice; then in the 1930s, during his two trips to Europe. He is one of the founders of modern Chinese painting and had a great impact on subsequent generations of painters in China and on the recognition of the existence of Chinese painting in Europe. The author illustrates the artistic position of this painter through the description of a work produced during his first trip to Europe and representing a symbolic building of the Parisian cultural life at the beginning of the last century: the Sorbonne University. Through an sympathetical description of this painting and a comparison with the painter's other works and those of his contemporaries, she seeks to show how the painter is part of an open modernity.