Zao Wou-Ki

Porcelain vase painted by Zao Wou-Ki in 2006. Musée Cernuschi Zao Wou-Ki (; 1 February 1920 – 9 April 2013 Zao Wou-Ki graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he studied under French-trained Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu.

Early years Zao was born in Beijing with family roots in Dantu, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. In his childhood he was brought back to his hometown Dantu where he studied calligraphy and gained acceptance to the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts. Wou-Ki's earliest exhibitions in France were met with praise from Joan Miró and Picasso.

Friends at the time included Norman Bluhm, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Nicolas de Staël, Sam Francis, Pierre Soulages, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Hans Hartung, who would meet at the Galerie Nina Dausset on Rue du Dragon.

In 1949, Zao Wou-Ki won first prize in a drawing competition judged by André Lhote and Marcel Gromaire. His prize was a copy of Histoire de la peinture occidentale (History of Western Painting) published by Albert Skira.

At the Desjobert printing house, Wou-Ki learned the techniques of lithography. In 1950, gallery owner Pierre Loeb visited the painter's studio, brought there by Henri Michaux, who would become a close friend. The painter worked for Loeb from then until 1957. That same year, Zao Wou-Ki took part in the Salon de Mai, where he would exhibit until 1978, and presented his first lithographs at the La Hune gallery.

From 1952, Wou-Ki exhibited regularly in Paris, then in Switzerland in Basel and Lausanne, and in the United States in Washington, Chicago, and New York, demonstrating international recognition.

He left the U.S. after a six-week stay, traveling to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong, where he met his second wife Chan May-Kan (陈美琴, May Zao), a film actress who had two children from her first marriage. Under the influence of Zao, she became a successful sculptor. In 1972, she committed suicide at age 41 due to mental illness. In 1972, he also visited his family in China who he had not seen since 1948.

In 1997, he married his third wife Françoise Marquet, who now serves as president of the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation.

Career Zao's works, influenced by Paul Klee, are orientated to abstraction. He names them with the date in which he finishes them, and in them, masses of colours appear to materialise a creating world, like a Big Bang, where light structures the canvas. He worked formats in triptychs and diptychs. While his work was stylistically similar to the Abstract Expressionists whom he met while travelling in New York, he was influenced by Impressionism. Zao Wou-Ki stated that he had been influenced by the works of Matisse, Picasso and Cézanne.

His meetings with Henri Michaux pushed him to review his Indian ink techniques, always based in Chinese traditional drawings. Zao was a member of the Académie des beaux-arts, and was considered to have been one of the most successful Chinese painters during his lifetime.

In 1982, he was invited to paint for the Fragrant Hills Hotel in Beijing, designed by I. M. Pei. I. M. Pei had a fellowship to Europe in the early 1950s and he met Wou-Ki at Galerie Claude Bernard, the gallery that represented Wou-Ki. In 1983, he returned to his alma mater, the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou to give lectures.

Former French President Jacques Chirac was offered a painting by Zao Wou-Ki by his ministers during their last meeting.

By the end of his life Zao had stopped producing new paintings due to health problems. He died on 9 April 2013 at his home in Switzerland.

Honours

Grand officier de la Légion d'honneur Commandeur de l'ordre national du Mérite Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Legacy

Exhibitions

In March 2011, De Sarthe Gallery in Hong Kong hosted the solo exhibition Zao Wou-Ki: Paintings 1950s–1960s for its inaugural opening, showcasing a selection of Zao’s oil works from his postwar career.

Later in March 2015, the gallery held a subsequent mini-retrospective, titled Zao Wou-Ki: Ink and Watercolor, which featured historical works on paper dating back to 1950.

In 2018 the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, held an exhibition of around 40 works by Zao.

From September 2023 to February 2024, the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou held an exhibition of almost 200 works of their alumni and former teacher Zao. The record for the artist was previously held by 29.09.64, another large painting that was sold for HK$153m (US$19.6m) at Christie's Hong Kong in May 2017. In 2018 Juin-Octobre 1985, the largest size that Zao Wou-ki ever worked on, was sold for HK$510m after premium, setting the record for the most valuable painting sold in Hong Kong auctions, as well as the auction record for an oil painting by an Asian artist.

In popular culture Literary anthropologist Andrew Brandel's book Moving Worlds: Literature, Memory, and Migration in Berlin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023) uses Zao's 1957 painting Water Music as its cover image. The book cover is designed by Val Cooke.