Zao Wou-Ki Chinese-French, 1920-2013
"Zao Wou-Ki is the painter of the invisible — one who transforms light into matter and silence into presence."
Born in Beijing in 1920 and naturalised French in 1964, Zao Wou-Ki is one of the defining figures of lyrical abstraction worldwide. Trained at the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, he settled in Paris in 1948 and developed a unique pictorial language blending Western gestural painting with Chinese calligraphic sensitivity. His works, held in the world's greatest public and private collections, regularly achieve record prices at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips.
"His painting is a meditation on light, time and space — an accomplished synthesis between East and West."
Zao Wou-Ki was born on 1 February 1920 in Beijing, into a family of scholars. He studied at the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts from 1935 to 1941, where he discovered modern Western painting — Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso. After graduating, he taught there for four years before sailing to Paris in 1948, drawn by the creative freedom of the French capital.
In Paris, he befriended Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Henri Michaux and Paul Klee, whose work deeply influenced him. In the 1950s, his canvases revealed mysterious signs inspired by ancient Chinese oracle script — an attempt to reconcile two cultural universes. From the 1960s onwards, he abandoned all figurative references to fully embrace lyrical abstraction: large compositions of vibrant colour, traversed by light, where space breathes and expands.
Naturalised French in 1964, he became one of the most singular voices of the École de Paris. His works entered the collections of the Centre Pompidou, MoMA New York, the Guggenheim, Tate Modern, and numerous Asian institutions. A member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de France since 2002, he received the Grand Prix National des Arts (1994) and was made Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur.
Zao Wou-Ki passed away on 9 April 2013 in Nyon, Switzerland. His works now achieve record prices at auction worldwide, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.
Major exhibitions: Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Shanghai Museum of Fine Arts. Retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, 2003. Monographs published by Flammarion, Skira, Thames & Hudson.