Zao Wo Ki

ZAO WOU KI (Beijing, 1921 - Nyon, Switzerland, 2013).
Untitled, from the Suite Olympic Centennial, 1992.
Lithograph on 270 gram Vélin d'Arches paper, copy E.A 35/50.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.
Zao Wou Ki is the second most sought-after postwar artist in the world and is the sixth most expensive artist of all time. In the first half of 2018, his sales ranked only behind those of stars such as Picasso, Monet, Modigliani or 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 in his childhood, an aspect that would influence his mature work, and later trained in painting at the Hangzhou College of Fine Arts between 1935-1941. A few years later, in 1948, he settled in Paris, in the Montparnasse district, where he would follow the artistic courses of Émile Othon Friesz and come into contact with the contemporary artistic avant-garde. He begins to experiment with lithography, a technique that he eventually mastered, as a result of his contact with Desjobert. He holds a solo exhibition at the Creuze Gallery in May 1949, with a presentation written by Bernard Dorival, curator of the National Museum of Modern Art. In January 1951 Pierre Loeb visits Wou-Ki's studio with Henri Michaux, organizing an exhibition at the Pierre Gallery for June, thus laying the foundations for a close collaborative relationship that would last six years. Thus, he exhibits regularly at the Pierre Gallery, and meets I. M. Pei and his wife Eileen, opening his circle of exhibitions to Switzerland, London, Basel and Lausanne, as well as in New York, Washington and Chicago. His painting is eminently abstract and colorist, very influenced by the work of Paul Klee, for his expressionist and emotive abstraction. He usually works with large masses of intense and contrasting color, often creating works of large dimensions, as well as diptychs or triptychs. They are often explosions of color, 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 gray tones.