Zao Wou-Ki (Zhao Wuji)

Collection of Patti Birch
Collection of Gloria Birch Friehling
Gifted to the present owner by the above in 1984

This work is in overall very good condition. There are hairline cracks along the upper edge. There is no sign of restoration under UV examination.
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A Wide Open World, a Perfect Journey

Zao Wou-Ki’s Retour de pêche, 1953

 

 

“For French people like ourselves, it is not only joyful but also hugely exciting to see that these young artists from other countries rushing to come to Paris, like they are rushing towards the capital of the world, towards the laboratory and grand hall of modern art. And the best part is that while they are influenced by France, they also retain their own faces, and act even more proactively as successors of their mother cultures. The French experience did not stifle their creativity, instead it made them flourish and thrive even more. It was the case with Lin Fengmian, it was also the case with Zao Wou-Ki” -- Bernard Dorival, then Director of Musée National d'Art Moderne, wrote in 1949 for Zao Wou-Ki’s solo exhibition at Galerie Greuze

 

 

During the 1940s when air transport was not yet very advanced, sea transport was the major connection between Europe and Asia. In 1948, Zao Wou-Ki boarded Andre Lebon, the same French liner which also took Lin Fengmian, his teacher at the School of Fine Arts of Hangzhou, abroad.

After a 36-day voyage, he arrived in Marseilles, into a Western art world that was completely novel for him. Everything was new and fresh in Paris. Like a sponge in water, he took in wholeheartedly the new things from the West, and opened the eyes of his mind to observe different artistic expressions and scenery in Paris. From 1948 to 1953, he painted a considerable number of representational landscape and still lifes, among which the sea and ship form a special subject, appearing intermittently, connecting the paintings by the artist over these five years. In fact, in terms of number, paintings of this subject are not exactly abundant, with less than 35 pieces, most of which executed from 1952 to 1953. Completed in 1953, the present piece is one of the special highlights among paintings of this subject.

 

Where the Heart Belongs

 

Before 1951, Zao Wou-Ki’s paintings seldom depicted the ocean, perhaps due to his fear of it. “I was not very interested in the sea. In fact, for a long time, I felt that the ocean was synonymous with foreign invasion of China, and it must be resisted at all costs…” he once said. Yet from 1951, his mindset and ideas went through significant changes. During that year, by chance he went to Switzerland where he visited a gallery. He saw Paul Klee’s poetic, metaphorical works filled with mysterious symbols. He was stunned by the experience. Klee transformed external objects and matters into symbols, with a sort of Eastern, philosophical ideas, making him realise paintings were not just about objectively depicting the external world, but the expression of individual imaginations using one’s own point of view. He also realised that it was in fact unnatural to dissociate himself from traditional Chinese culture simply because he wanted to avoid being seen as a “Chinese painter” with “Oriental flavours”. Chinese aesthetics, as well as thousands of years of history, had been his sources of cultural nutrients all along. He began to approach them seriously, and found new creative energy within the Chinese culture. With this as the starting point, Zao Wou-Ki’s vision became broader than ever, the diverse natural scenery became one of his creative subjects, and his fear of the sea was therefore overcome. With an open heart, he observed the sea and painted the sea, through which he expressed his unique vantage point. It was against such a context that Retour de pêche was completed.

 

The Aesthetics of Lines

 

We must break free from the constraints of traditions, yet at the same time not forget that there are positive meanings within them, because Chinese paintings are among the greatest treasures of the world. Our own traditions are so rich, so strong and so powerful. In Chinese paintings, the most appropriate treatment of space and light can be found.

Zao Wou-Ki

 

 

In the horizontal Retour de pêche, what captures the viewer’s attention is the ocean which occupies two-thirds of the composition. Several vessels of different sizes sail in the vast and open sea, as the night falls, indigo blue light came through the darkness, reflected on the rippling water, bringing with it a leaping, vibrating rhythm. Zao Wou-Ki employed a special brushing technique for the surface of the sea, to create layers of wave patterns. There seems to be an order behind the varying spacing in these line patterns, and such a technique seldom appears on large areas in the artist’s paintings, making the work even more unique. Such a technique to depict water with lines reminds the viewer of Water Painting (Shui Tu) by Song Dynasty master painter Ma Yuan, a favourite of Zao’s. No colour is redundant on Ma Yuan’s painting, only the simplest of contours and pale ink that depict the water’s many expressions with extraordinary details and subtlety – fine, rolling waves like the scales (of a dragon) and the water flowing upstream. Zao Wou-Ki has taken the unique aesthetics of lines in Chinese ink painting, which makes a minimalistic use of ink in its expression, and offers his own interpretation and transformation using oil paint in Western fine art, opening a new domain of his own while finding himself in the process. Compared with Beach completed in 1949, the significant changes in the artist’s almost reborn creative expression and thinking are highly palpable.

 

In depicting the ship, Zao Wou-Ki deconstructed the complex original structure and simplified it into black lines that give an overall portrayal, mastering the complex with simplicity, unrestrained by representational depiction of objects, eluding to the ship’s existence with a triangular colour block, instilling into the piece more personal ideas regarding structure as well as the spatial interrelationship between objects. The approach he adopts here regarding the sculpting of a three-dimensional sense is not traditional in Western art, we can even see the wave patterns in the middle of the ship. In here, the abstract and the concrete co-exist with no awkwardness whatsoever, a testament to his artistry. Retour de pêche reveals the artist’s boundless vision and dazzling power as he reconciled with his own aesthetic traditions of the East.

 

The present lot was owned by Patti Birch, a renowned New York collector and a major advocate of Zao Wou-Ki’s early works. In mid-1950s, she gifted the piece to a close collector friend as a wedding present, to congratulate her friend for finding a soulmate to embark on a perfect journey in a new phase of life, adding to the piece’s historical significance. It has been kept in great condition by the collector for over five decades, passed on from one generation to the next without ever appearing in an auction until now, making this a rare opportunity for art lovers and collectors alike.