ZAO WOU KI (Beijing, 1921 - Nyon, Switzerland, 2013).
Untitled, from the Suite Olympic Centennial, 1992.
Lithograph on 270 gsm Vélin d'Arches paper, copy 110/250.
Hand signed and justified.
This work is part of the "Suite Olympic Centennial", complete edition 110/250, which will be auctioned on 27 September 2022, in 50 consecutive lots numbered 35245230 to 35245280.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.
Zao Wou Ki is the second most sought-after post-war artist in the world and the sixth most expensive of all time. In the first half of 2018, his sales were only behind those of stars such as Picasso, Monet, Modigliani and Andy Warhol. At the end of 2018, one of his paintings was sold for 56.5 million euros at auction at Sotheby's. The work made Wou-Ki the most expensive Asian artist in history.
Zao Wou Ki was born into a Franco-Chinese family and grew up in a highly cultured environment, interested in the arts and sciences. He studied calligraphy as a child, an aspect that would influence his mature work, and later trained in painting at the Hangzhou College of Fine Arts from 1935-1941. A few years later, in 1948, he settled in Paris, in the Montparnasse district, where he followed the artistic courses of Émile Othon Friesz and came into contact with the contemporary artistic avant-garde. He began to experiment with lithography, a technique which he eventually mastered, following his contact with Desjobert. He holds a solo exhibition at the Galerie Creuze in May 1949, with a presentation written by Bernard Dorival, curator of the Musée National d'Art Moderne. In January 1951 Pierre Loeb visits Wou-Ki's studio with Henri Michaux, organising an exhibition at the Galerie Pierre for June, thus laying the foundations for a close collaborative relationship that would last six years. He held regular exhibitions at the Pierre Gallery and met I. M. Pei and his wife Eileen, opening his circle of exhibitions in Switzerland, London, Basel and Lausanne, as well as in New York, Washington and Chicago. His painting is eminently abstract and colourist, strongly influenced by the work of Paul Klee, for its expressionist and emotive abstraction. He tends to work with large masses of intense and contrasting colour, often creating works of large dimensions, as well as diptychs or triptychs. They are often explosions of colour, germinal "big bangs", the origin of a world in creation, as we can see in this lithograph. Delicate patches of blue and mauve intermingle with some grey tones.