ZAO WOU-KI (1920 - 2013)
Born in Beijing, Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) worked predominantly in oils, watercolor and ink, but also experimented with engraving and lithography. Wou-Ki means ‘no limits’ in Chinese – a prescient forename for an artist who em- braced different cultural identities without ever being beholden to one. In 1948, Zao relocated to Paris. The French capital was an inspiration for Zao, who had idolized Matisse and Picasso in his formative years and continued to be influenced by Western modernism and the work of the Impressionists and Expressionists. Zao is considered to have been one of the most successful painters born in China of his generation, with his paint- ings widely recognized as an exemplary reconciliation of Chinese and Western aesthetics, in which the language of modern Western abstraction is enriched by a Chinese chord deeply rooted in the past. Zao’s work has been celebrated in numerous museum shows around the world, including most recently the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; the Asia University Museum of Modern Art, Taichung, Taiwan; Asia Society Museum, New York, USA; and STPI, Singapore, amongst several others.
Sans Titre, 2007
watercolor
56.8 x 77.1 cm
Zao’s whole life lived in a voluntary ascetic and minimalist deprivation is animated by a mysterious enchanted fire. Everything is where it should be and everything has a meaning in this paradise of childhood. The painter puts everything in a predetermined order that nothing threatens, not the man who lazily basks in the sun, or the wild animal which, stag or wolf, howls its love in the middle of the forest.
Zao Wou-Ki with Dominique de Villepin and Emanuel Ungaro, La Cavalerie, 2008
Zao Wou-Ki in Pully, 2012
Each figure represented tells about harmony between beings and between things, they talk together, they correspond. In his last works, the line has disappeared to surrender the whole canvas to gushing colors. He pulls the same thread, the one of an amazement that over- whelms him and overwhelms us in the same sharing. The order, somewhat frozen in the beginning, is swept by winds, emotions, feelings. Life vibrates, shivers everywhere on the paper or on the canvas, the hurdles have been passed.
