Zao Wou-Ki

French, born in China, 1920–2013

BiographyZao Wou-Ki (Zhào Wújí 赵无极 / 趙無極, 1920–2013) was born in Beijing to a family that traced its lineage to the Song dynasty (961-1279) imperial house. He grew up in Dantu, Jiangsu Province, in an area of southern China regarded as the heartland of traditional Chinese literary culture. He spent his childhood learning calligraphy and Chinese literati traditions. Zao’s father was an amateur painter and his grandfather was a former naval gunner of the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), as well as being a devoted Daoist disciple. Exposed to Daoist thought during his formative years, the religious and philosophical tradition deeply influenced his oeuvre. Zao showed great talent for painting at a very young age, and he was enthralled by both Chinese literati paintings and European modern art that he saw on the postcards his uncle brought back from Paris. In 1935, he entered the National School of Fine Art in Hangzhou. Though disappointed by the academy’s dogmatic training in professional Chinese painting and European neoclassicism, which he regarded as lifeless, Zao was inspired and encouraged by painters Wú Dàyǔ 吳大羽 (1903–1988) and Lín Fēngmián 林風眠 (1900 – 1991) to pursue his own interest in capturing the nature and harmony that he found in literati paintings and works by European masters such as Paul Klee and Henri Matisse. After graduating in 1941, Zao became a teaching assistant in National School of Fine Art which had moved to Chongqing due to the Sino-Japanese War. In Chongqing, he met Vadime Elisséeff (1918–2002), the cultural attaché of the French embassy, who appreciated his talents and invited him to Paris.

Zao moved to Paris in 1948 with his wife Xiè Jǐnglán 谢景兰 (Lan-lan) and settled down in Montparnasse, where he lived next to Alberto Giacometti and became familiar with other avant-garde artists living in that area. At the end of the year, his discovery of Desjobert Printing Studio evoked his interest in color lithography and etching. Under the guidance of Johnny Friedlander (1912–1992), Zao learned basic skills of printmaking and soon began to experiment with unconventional processes in which he created painterly qualities in his prints. Fascinated by Zao’s prints, poet Henri Michaux (1899–1984) wrote several poems as comments for the prints and became Zao’s lifelong friend. From 1950 to 1952, Zao went on a tour throughout France and other European countries, producing mainly compositions of landscapes that were simplified and reduced to geometric frameworks. After 1953, the figurative elements in his works gradually disappeared and turned into pure abstract signs he invented himself. In 1957 Zao visited his brother who lived in New Jersey and he met with abstract expressionist artists in New York. Affected by the straightforwardness he saw in American paintings, Zao began to paint in broader and more fluid brushstrokes on larger surfaces after he returned to Paris in 1958. Since then the invented signs in his paintings disintegrated into deliberate arrangements of light and space composed by color masses and lines which he stated was inspired by his rediscovery of Chinese landscape paintings. Zao became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2002. He died at his home in Switzerland in 2013.

Zimeng Xiang

Source:

Leymarie, Jean, and Françoise Marquet. Zao Wou-ki. New York: Rizzoli, 1979.