Zao Wou-Ki

Zao Wou-Ki or Chao Wu-chi, 1920–2013, Chinese-French painter who combined a traditional Asian sensibility with Western abstraction. He studied ink painting and calligraphy as well as Western art techniques at the Chinese Academy of Art, Hangzhou (1935–41) and taught there, moving to Paris in 1948. He became a French citizen in 1964. After using lithography early in his career, Zao moved to oil painting. Well-known works include Red, Blue, Black, Signs in Motion, and Mistral (all 1957), and Abstraction (1958). Later paintings were given names based on the date he completed them, including 10.1.68, 15.04.77, 18.03.85, and 27.02.98. Zao's art was not fully recognized in China until the 1980s. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York City, and Tate Modern, London.

See catalog and study by Melissa Walt et al. (2016).

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