Zao Wou-Ki (Zhao Wuji)

signed in pinyin and Chinese and dated 1949 (lower right)
Executed in 1949

Private American Collection

There is a pinpoint loss of paint at the upper and mid-left and craquelure in the upper left. There are multiple losses to the encaustic. This painting is in satisfactory visual condition. There is no restoration apparent under UV light.
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This painting was completed in the year after Zao Wou-ki left China to go to France.  Filled with the artist's passion, Zao Wou-ki's enthusiasm for his work is evident in the varying thickness of oil paint and encaustic on the board and the artist's scrapings and engravings included as part of this composition.  In the mysterious atmosphere, a crescent moon hangs high in the night sky, casting its white light over the trees in the forest and the cluster of small animals below. This work is rich in narrative and imagination and is open to the viewer's interpretation.

Of Zao Wou-ki at the time, the French art critic Pierre Cabanne said that the artist could not yet speak French and that he was living in Montparnasse in Paris, painting every day; hardworking and filled with joy.  He was not willing to be seen as a "Chinese painter", but simply as "a painter".  According to Cabanne, his success was not owed to his talent, his superior technique or his background, but due to his powerful imagination and his passion. [1]

[1] Pierre Cabanne, Zao Wou-ki Retrospective: Artistic Commentary. Artist's Magazine, Taipei, March, 1993, p.443