The Blockchain and Us (2017)

The Blockchain and Us (2017)

Zao Wou-Ki (pinyin: Zhào Wújí; Wade–Giles: Chao Wu-chi;

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. From 1935 to 1941, he studied painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. In 1948, he went with his wife Lan-lan, a composer, to Paris to live on the same block in Montparnasse where the classes of Émile Othon Friesz took place. His earliest exhibitions in France were met with praise from Joan Miró and Picasso.

Zao and his wife pursued their own careers, their son having stayed in China with Zao's parents. In the mid-1950s, they were divorced. In 1957, Zao decided to visit the United States where his younger brother Chao Wu-Wai was living in Montclair, New Jersey, close to the art scene of New York City. He wanted to learn more about "pop art". While in the US, he painted seven canvases at his brother’s house. There are relatively few items dating from that year (1957). Years later, the largest canvas was given by his brother, Chao Wu-Wai, to the Detroit Institute of Arts.^[3]

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.^[4]

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.

His auction record of RMB 89,680,000 (US$14,718,771) was set at Sotheby's, Beijing, on 1 December 2013. 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.

An inner, imaginary landscape: Zao Wou-Ki’s 29.09.64

Clara Rivollet admires a prodigious abstract work by the Beijing-born, Paris-based artist which has been in private hands for almost 50 years, and is to be offered in the Contemporaries: Voices from the East and West sale on 27 May in Hong Kong 

Born in Beijing in 1921, Zao Wou-Ki moved to Paris in 1948 —
and would never again live in China. In 1956 he began working
with New York dealer Samuel Kootz, who promoted the Chinese
 artist to American private collections and institutions and
encouraged him to experiment with larger formats.
In 1961, Zao took a more spacious studio in the Montparnasse
neighbourhood, which allowed him to paint on bigger canvases.

In Paris, where the Galerie de France organised annual
 solo exhibitions of Zao’s work, the artist mingled with
Lyrical Abstraction artists including Pierre Soulages,
Alfred Manessier, Hans Hartung and Georges Mathieu.
During the day, he would spend long hours in his studio;
in the evenings, he attended joyous gallery openings
in Saint Germain. ‘Zao needed the freedom of creation
and innovation that Paris brought him,’ says Clara
Rivollet, a specialist in Asian Art at Christie’s Paris.

The 1960s was a time of both great joy and deep sorrow for Zao,
 whose wife was battling mental illness.
The intensity of this period nurtured his painterly practice,
and the artist developed a new technical maturity and
material ease. As Zao would later say of this decade,
‘I spent ten years at full speed, like driving a fast car.’

Zao Wou-Ki (Zhao Wuji, France/China, 1920-2013), 29.09.64, 1964. 
Oil on canvas. 230 x 345 cm (90½ x 135⅞ in). 
Estimate: HK$38,000,000-48,000,000. This lot is offered in 
Contemporaries: Voices from East and West / Asian 20th 
Century & Contemporary Art (Evening Sale) on 
27 May 2017 at Christie’s in Hong Kong

Zao’s exceptional 29.09.64  was purchased directly
from the artist in 1969 by a French architect
(the father of the present owner). Following the
Second World War, a period of rapid modernisation
 saw the architect’s practice flourish: he built hospitals,
 research centres and administrative buildings
throughout France and Algeria. The architect assembled
a strong collection of abstract paintings inspired by
natural forms, of which Zao’s 29.09.64  is the
ultimate gem.

‘It’s a very complex composition, with multiple layers
of oil,’ says Rivollet. A ‘structure of deep, black brushstrokes’
is topped with a network of ‘controlled, sinuous lines
 that remind us of Chinese calligraphy’. But this kind of
loose movement in the white paint is also inspired by
Pollock, as Rivollet explains.

‘There’s a real sense of speed in the brushstrokes, and
that’s what translates the energy of the painting,’ she says.
‘He uses different colours to create depth, which a
Chinese painter couldn’t do with ink and paper.’
‘Zao Wou-Ki brought new possibilities to Chinese art,
and is today regarded as the Chinese modern master’

This painting could be a Western painting, the specialist notes,
but while it is abstract, in its essence it remains very Chinese.
‘Zao Wou-Ki brought new possibilities to Chinese art’,
Rivollet notes, ‘and today is recognised as the Chinese
 modern master.’

Alongside Hommage à Edgar Varèse, 29.09.64  is Zao’s
largest canvas from the 1960s, and among the most important
of his works from that decade currently in private hands.
Like Hommage à Edgar Varèse, the painting originally
measured 255 x 345 cm. In the early 1970s, the architect
 moved to a new house in the Paris region. Under the supervision of
 the artist, 25 centimetres were removed and Zao re-signed the piece.

For Zao Wou-Ki, abstraction always represents an inner,
 imaginary landscape. His work sought to capture the
harmonious movements of qi, the source of life and the
 universe; his pioneering style achieved an expressive
depth that stands in marked contrast to that of many
other abstract artists of his time. Following the New York
Asia Society exhibition in 2016, the artist will be the
subject of a major retrospective at the Musée National
d’Art Moderne in Paris in 2018.