ZAO WOU-KI | 10.03.79

Acquired directly from the artist by the original private European collector in the 1970s
Important Private European Collection

The work is overall in very good and its original condition. Examination under UV light reveals no sign of restoration.
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Mount Sumeru in a Mustard Seed: Two Brilliant Zao Wou-Ki Pieces from the 1970s Zao Wou-Ki broke out onto the New York art scene in the late 1950s. He was represented by Kootz Gallery, which had been successful in promoting abstract art, and during this time, he was influenced by the unbridled freedom of American Abstract Expressionism, as well as the preference of American artists and collectors for large paintings. He began making these larger-scale paintings, which became an important feature of his work in the 1960s. Confronted with a vast expanse of canvas, Zao wielded the brush in his hand like an axe set to split heaven and earth. Unprecedented, unusual energies permeated his paintings. However, there is more to Zao’s body of work than these monumental pieces.  His refined small paintings have a wonderful subtlety, especially considering that the artist was able to communicate his emotions in such a limited space. The phrase “Mount Sumeru in a mustard seed” means that a small thing can have endless possibilities, and despite the diminutive size of a mustard seed, it can easily contain Mount Sumeru. Similarly, an artist can express grand emotion in a smaller space, as shown in two excellent Zao Wou-Ki works from the 1970s offered in this sale: 23.03.77 (Lot 1031) and 10.03.79 (Lot 1032).

“At age 50, I knew the mandate of heaven,” according to Confucius. Zao Wou-Ki’s life changed dramatically in the 1970s. He had been battling a debilitating illness and early death of his wife May-Kan dealt him twin blows, and he lost the desire to paint. Once he reached the nadir, he then looked at all the variety in the world, and an insight led him an important turning point in his creative career. May-Kan’s presence in Zao’s life had been like daylight, illuminating his bold Hurricane period, and her passing represented the end of a wonderful phase in his artistic career, causing him to lose its direction. In that temporary creative void, Zao grappled to find inspiration. Encouraged by his good friend and poet Henri Michaux, he once again picked up the brush and explored traditional Chinese ink. When he returned to oil painting, an entirely new style had already evolved. He later recalled, “In 1973, my painting style changed. Perhaps it was because I had matured, and all of my accumulated efforts were bearing fruit. I painted my life, but I also wanted to paint a space that the eye could not see, a dream space, a place that always makes you feel at peace, and what I used were uneasy forms full of conflicting forces. Every painting, from the smallest to the largest, is part of this dream space.” In the early 1970s, Zao Wou-Ki returned to China after more than two decades abroad, and the “dream space” that “always makes you feel at peace” found a source for its inspiration and composition. In 23.03.77, rays of red light symbolizing the East suddenly appear in the center of the painting, as if the day was just breaking. The painting evokes a deep sense of vitality and a magnificence that is very rare for this period. Red and black calligraphic brushstrokes intersect in the center of the painting, highlighting one another and conveying a sense of harmony with the complementary forces of yin and yang.

After the lightning speed of his Hurricane period, the work that Zao Wou-Ki made in the late 1970s gradually departed from his original compositions, shifting from concentration to dispersal. The white emptiness in the middle of 10.03.79 feels like looking over a thousand miles to a vast horizon blanketed with mist and cloud. There is a haziness to the paintings reminiscent of the landscapes of Northern Song painter Mi Fu, as well as the roiling force of the oceans painted by British Romantic J. M. W. Turner; the design of the composition begins from the perspective of nature and then moves directly into an otherworldly spiritual realm. This reflects what Michael Sullivan wrote in The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art: “His abstract oil paintings combine calligraphic liveliness with an atmospheric depth that... is the expression of his instinctive Chinese feeling for three-dimensional space. The Chinese artist is never concerned with the surface of things. He is always aware of what lies behind it, and the misty distances that fill so many traditional paintings hint at a reality that exists beyond what the eye can see.” The title of 10.03.79 reveals something important, because 10 March 1979 was the date if his wife May-Kan’s death, and so Zao Wou-Ki painted a curtain of mist. A pure divine light pierces through the obscuring mist, indicating the sublimation of the artist’s mood. This single-minded absorption in painting ushered in the glorious years of his mature work in the 1980s.



This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné currently being prepared by Françoise Marquet and Yann Hendgen (Information provided by Fondation Zao Wou-Ki)