Zao Wou-Ki

Galerie de France, Paris
Galerie Veranneman, Bruxelles
Collection particulière, Belgique (acquis auprès de celle-ci circa 1979)

Perls Gallery, Zao Wou-Ki, 1968; catalogue no.5, illustré

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration although the yellow is brighter in the original work. The work is executed on its original canvas and is not relined. Some retractions due to the drying of the paint located on the yellow area by the left edge are visible in the catalogue illustration. Two zones of light, stabilized cracks (one located 50 cm from the left edge and 47 from the lower, and the other 54 cm from the right edge and 46 cm from the lower) are visible under close inspection. Under Ultra Violet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. This work is in very good condition.
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Au tournant des années 1960, Zao Wou-Ki n’a plus rien à envier à ceux avec qui il a étudié à l’école des Beaux-Arts de Hangzhou, transférée en 1938 à Chongping face à l’avancée de l’armée impériale japonaise. Plus rien à envier à ceux qui « essayaient toujours de peindre comme Matisse et Picasso » et n’avaient pas, comme lui, assimilé aussi bien les leçons de Cézanne et de Matisse que celles des T’ang (618-907 après J.-C.) et des Song (960-1279 après J.-C.). Il aura fallu plus d’une dizaine d’années à Zao après avoir quitté la Chine à la veille de la victoire de Mao Tsé Toung, en 1949, pour arriver à concilier deux traditions aussi antagonistes, deux pratiques aussi dissemblables que celles de la peinture orientale et de la peinture occidentale. » (Zao Wou-Ki, Françoise Marquet, Autoportrait, Paris, 1988)

 Comme il l’explique lui-même dans son autobiographie, ces années sont pour lui « la fin d'un cycle » et l’amorce d'une « étape irréversible ». Wou-Ki s’est libéré à jamais de toute entrave naturaliste, acceptant de se laisser submerger par des émotions qu'il n'essaiera plus jamais de dissimuler derrière la moindre marque figurative. « Je voulais peindre ce qui ne se voit pas, le souffle de la vie, le vent, le mouvement, la vie des formes, l'éclosion des couleurs et leur fusion », explique-t-il. (Ibid.)

Dès lors, Zao n’a plus qu’une idée en tête : « peindre la peinture ». Grâce à l’enseignement qu’il a reçu à l'école des Beaux-Arts de Hangzhou, il sait mieux que nul autre s’approprier l'espace et la lumière. Reste à trouver un équilibre entre le geste et le souffle, le vide et le plein, le visible et l’invisible ; et faire parler la couleur au-delà du monde des formes. 

7.8.1965 est l’exemple parfait de cet aboutissement. Tout d’abord parce qu’il s’agit d’un grand format pour l’époque, et que les grandes surfaces lui demandent, de son propre aveu, de se battre avec l'espace pour « exprimer le mouvement, sa lenteur lancinante ou sa fulgurance, et faire vibrer la surface de la toile grâce aux contrastes. » Mais aussi parce l’œuvre est le reflet de de ce que vit alors l’artiste dans sa vie personnelle, tour à tour tourmentée et heureuse, « aussi paradoxal que cela puisse paraître. » (Ibid.)

At the turn of the 1960s, Zao Wou-Ki had no reason to envy his fellow students with whom he studied at the Fine Arts school of Hangzhou, transferred in 1938 to Chongping in face of the advance of the Japanese Imperial Army. No reason to envy those who “were still trying to paint like Matisse and Picasso” and had not, like him, assimilated as much the lessons of Cézanne and Matisse, as of the Tang (618 – 907 AD) and the Song (960-1279 AD) dynasties. It took Zao over ten years afer having left China on the eve of Mao Tse-Tung’s victory, in 1949, to succeed in reconciling two such antagonistic traditions, two such dissimilar practices as those of Oriental art and Western Painting. (Zao Wou-Ki, Françoise Marquet, Autoportrait, Paris, 1988.)

As he explains in his autobiography, those years were “the end of a cycle” and the beginning of an “irreversible stage”. Wou-Ki freed himself from all naturalist shackles, accepting to let himself be submerged by emotions that he will never try to hide behind the slightest figurative line. “I wanted to paint what cannot be seen, the breath of life, wind, movement, the life of forms, the blossoming of colours and their fusion”, he explains.

Henceforth, Zao had only one idea in mind: “to paint painting”. Thanks to the teaching he had received at the Fine Arts school of Hangzhou, he knew, better than anyone, how to appropriate space and light. A balance between gesture and breath, the void and fullness, the visible and the invisible remained to be found in order to make colour speak beyond the world of forms.

7.8.1965 is the perfect example of this culmination. Firstly, because it is a large format work for that period, and the large surfaces required him to battle with space: “I had to fill this surface, make it live and give myself over to it. I sought to express movement, its throbbing slowness or its swiftness, I wanted to make the canvas surface vibrate thanks to its contrasts” tells Zao Wou-Ki. But also because the canvas reflected what the artist experienced in his personal life at the time, both troubled and particularly happy as these years were of torment and, “as paradoxical as this may seem, also ones of true happiness”. (Ibid.)