Wou-Ki Zao

The Chinese-French painter and graphic artist Zao Wou-Ki was born in Beijing on February 13, 1920. After moving to Paris in 1948, he became one of the most important representatives of the Nouvelle École de Paris, who succeeded in his works in a unique way to unite the traditional art of China with the current trends in Western art after 1945. Zao Wou-Ki began studying art at the art academy in Hangzhou at the age of fifteen and attended the academy from 1935 to 1941, after which he taught there until 1947. He showed his works in his first solo exhibition in Shanghai in 1947. Already at this time, Zao Wou-Ki admired the Western contemporary art movements and the work of Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, for example. In 1948 Zao Wou-Ki went to Paris, attended painting courses at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and set up a studio on Montparnasse. Zao Wou-Ki's studio neighbor is Alberto Giacometti, he makes friends with Henri Michaux, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Soulages, Joan Mitchell, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Sam Francis, Hans Hartung and others. Large-scale works with abstract-poetic color worlds. Zao Wou-Ki quickly comes into contact in Paris with the other artists living here from the circle of the Nouvelle École de Paris, who drive the development of abstract painting after World War II and with lyrical abstraction, Tachism and Informel form the European variants of the roughly simultaneous development of American action painting and abstract expressionism. In 1949, the Galerie Creuze shows Zao Wou-Ki's first solo exhibition in Paris. During a trip to Switzerland, Zao Wou-Ki saw the works of Paul Klee, which made a deep impression on him, which can be seen as a stylistic echo in the works of these years. As with Paul Klee, Zao Wou-Ki's works also have a very special poetry. Increasingly in the 1950s, Zao Wou-Ki turned to abstraction in large-scale paintings as well as expansive diptychs and triptychs. The expressively applied layers of color offer a variety of associations to subtle landscape depictions and richly nuanced landscape moods. Zao Wou-Ki also works in the techniques of lithography and etching. In collaboration with Henri Michaux and André Malraux, he created illustrations for poems and several books. His friend Henri Michaux also encouraged Zao-Wou-Ki to use the traditional Chinese technique of ink painting in 1971. Important representative of the Nouvelle École de Paris. Zao Wu-Ki undertook numerous journeys in his life. In 1957/58 he traveled through the USA, studying in depth the works of the artists of the New York School in New York. He then visited his friend Pierre Soulages in Hawaii, before traveling on to Japan and spending six months in Hong Kong, later visiting his native China several times. In New York, Zao Wou-Ki comes into contact with the art dealer Samuel Kootz, who shows the first solo exhibition of his works in the USA in 1959. In 1964 Zao Wou-Ki became a French citizen, and in 1967 he was even one of the artists representing France at the World Exhibition in Montreal, Canada. In 1965, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany, presented the first retrospective of Zao Wou-Ki's oeuvre. In 1969, the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal, Canada, curated another major retrospective. 1980-1984 Zao Wou-Ki teaches at the Ecole Nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Paris, 1985 at his old art college in Hangzhou. 1996 he takes part in the Venice Biennale. Numerous important exhibitions and honors worldwide follow. In 2008, at the age of 88, Zao Wou-Ki decides to stop working with oil paints; in 2010 he paints his last watercolor. In 2011 Zao Wou-Ki moves to Nyon-Dully, Switzerland, where he dies on April 9, 2013 at the age of 93.