The newly opened M+ Museum in Hong Kong was given a significant donation of works by Chinese artist Zao Wou-Ki by his family.
Zao Wou-Ki is considered one of the greatest modern artists – not just in China, but in entire Asia. Zao was known for blending European Modernism with the traditional visual art of China. Most of the works are priced high – fetching up to $65 million – making them hard to acquire for many museums. For most of his career, Zao worked on grand gestural paintings. However, later in his life, he moved towards printmaking. Zao Wou-Ki died in 2013 at the age of 93.
The donation of 12 works came from Sin-May Roy Zao, the artist’s stepdaughter. Most of these works were prints from the later period of Zao’s career. Some works also date from the 1940s and 50s – an early period in the artist’s life when he was based in Paris. Aside from nine prints, the donation also includes two oil paintings, Open Air Theatre (1945) and Piazza Sienna (1951).
In an Instagram post, the museum wrote: “Few artists have achieved the acclaim of Zao Wou-Ki. The trailblazing modernist master earned fame in the Paris art world by integrating his Chinese aesthetic heritage with European artistic mediums.” Lesley Ma, the curator of ink art at M+ Museum, also said: “You can see how he was trying to incorporate aspects of the calligraphic and ink landscape tradition. It was an interesting primary medium for him.”
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Zao Wou-Ki had left Paris in 1958 after his first divorce and moved to Hong Kong but returned to Paris later in his life. Speaking about the influence of the city in his art, he once said in a Christie’s interview: “Although the influence of Paris is undeniable in all my training as an artist, I also wish to say that I have gradually rediscovered China. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is to Paris that I owe this return to my deepest origins.”
