.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Originally developed in Europe, watercolour painting is an ancient medium that was traditionally used to produce studies for oil paintings. In this role as a lesser medium used to support oil painting, watercolours have been in widespread use in the West since the Renaissance. By the 18th century, however, numerous English painters had escaped the influence of oil techniques and were developing the watercolour as an artistic genre of its own. When used as the medium for mixing and diluting watercolour pigments, water's clear, flowing qualities produced transparent colours, a sense of light, and rich layers, effects that were difficult to achieve using other Western mediums. The physical characteristics of watercolour painting therefore resemble those associated with traditional Chinese ink painting, not only in terms of the painting implements, techniques, and expressive forms used, but also in the lyrical quality the mediums possess. For Zao Wou-Ki, who spent a lifetime exploring the fusion of Eastern and Western art, watercolours served as an important vehicle by which he expressed his artistic visions throughout his entire career.
By 1961, Zao Wou-Ki had spent 13 years in France; during this period, his oil paintings were already reaching a peak of concentrated expressive perfection. This Untitled work (Lot 139), is an outstanding example of how the artist explored rhythmic composition in a painting that balances tension with relaxation and lightness with heaviness. Diluting his pigments with varying amounts of water, Zao let the colours seep and spread across the paper's surface, exploring the shimmering effects that could be created using just a few colours. A soft grey wash flows between areas of light and dark, while several wisps of indigo-blue suggest mists hanging above mountains. The bottom of the composition is free and wild, suggesting the surging energy of waves and water while light seems to shine through a break in the clouds above, echoing the subtle handling of light and water by English artist J.M.W. Turner. Zao's watercolour also evokes the hazy chaos of the universe in its first moments of creation, bringing to mind the image of myriad things emerging from primordial mists.
In another watercolour painting, Untitled work (Lot 138) from 1967, Zao combines the compositional style and appeal of traditional Chinese painting with the subtle hues of watercolour. Here, rather than filling the pictorial space with his brushwork, Zao leaves large areas of empty space. Traditionally, empty spaces in Chinese paintings were often filled with poetry inscriptions; such inscriptions provided commentaries that enhanced the subject and conception of the painting, while also becoming a visual element of the painting themselves. And, like the white spaces in the composition, the painted characters of the inscriptions would also wind among the painting's spaces. In an original act of creativity, Zao folded the paper in two while the work was still wet, so that blurred regions of blue along the fold mirror each other in a dynamic, complementary fashion. Horizontal strokes spread across the breadth of this composition, embellished with finer and more fragmented touches, resulting in a combination of feather-light touches and broader swathes of dense, silky strokes. At the same time, rising and falling patterns of dark and light combine with regions of texture and layering to create drama. As in Turner's watercolours, light is balanced by the tension between the painting's forms and empty spaces, while a sense of speed is expressed by the confluence of urgent and relaxed brushstrokes. In Chinese traditional painting, the artist would inscribe poems or greetings in empty space to convey the lyrical connotation and the inner spirit; more importantly, it would become part of the painting. The inscription embodies the painter's own perceptions, so does the empty space. This painting is a gift for the artist's friend Patricia Sapone, as Zao Wou-Ki wrote in the lower right corner in ink: Pour Patricia Sapone. Patricia is a member of the Sapone family in Nice, France. The Sapone family has closed to many recognized artists such as Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Hans Hartung and Zao Wou-Ki since 1950s. Later on in 1970s, the Sapone family opened their space in Nice, Galerie Sapone, where Zao Wou-Ki held his solo exhibition in 1993.
Forty years later, Zao Wou-Ki produced a very different watercolour work (Lot 137). In 2008, inspired by the Impressionists, he began to go outdoors to do his painting. During that year he stopped painting oil on canvas works, no longer pursuing the weighty, powerful brushwork or the diverse textures of his earlier paintings, but instead entering a period of sunny, all-embracing optimism. With his colour palette liberated, his work becomes filled with a sense of penetrating light and a floating, flowing force that recalls the wanyue (graceful and restrained) school of Song poetry, with its gentler tones and lucid style. His painting style becomes lighter and gauzier, as lively as a breeze rippling across water. Colours here are clear and open; blue and azure tones fold and spread into a field of warmer hues, like light spreading its colours and splashing into broad curtains of natural colour. Broad, horizontal strokes stretch in a rainbow of colour along the bottom, the unrestrained lines and colours of this painting seem to have been produced in one grand sweep. The transitions between various hues in Zao Wou-Ki's work feel utterly natural, as each colour both complements and heightens neighboring tones.
In his early years, while studying with Lin Fengmian at the Hangzhou Academy of the Arts, Zao Wou-Ki learned to embrace a spirit of courageous innovation. Upon arriving in France, he at first avoided Chinese traditions, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the post-war Parisian art world. But while Paris offered him freedom from the confines of tradition, it also directed him on a long return journey back towards his own cultural traditions. Zao was thus able to employ a fusion of Eastern and Western creative vocabularies to express the indefinable: the energy and 'qi' of the universe. The French poet Henri Michaux described Zao's work this way: 'Revealing while concealing, and seemingly broken and unconnected, his lines wander at will, tracing for us the pulses of dreams and reveries.' In his watercolour works on paper, Zao Wou-Ki presents racing, flowing streams of condensed power, guiding the viewer towards imaginative spaces where wind and waves roll unhurried beneath the vastness of the moon and sky.
By 1961, Zao Wou-Ki had spent 13 years in France; during this period, his oil paintings were already reaching a peak of concentrated expressive perfection. This Untitled work (Lot 139), is an outstanding example of how the artist explored rhythmic composition in a painting that balances tension with relaxation and lightness with heaviness. Diluting his pigments with varying amounts of water, Zao let the colours seep and spread across the paper's surface, exploring the shimmering effects that could be created using just a few colours. A soft grey wash flows between areas of light and dark, while several wisps of indigo-blue suggest mists hanging above mountains. The bottom of the composition is free and wild, suggesting the surging energy of waves and water while light seems to shine through a break in the clouds above, echoing the subtle handling of light and water by English artist J.M.W. Turner. Zao's watercolour also evokes the hazy chaos of the universe in its first moments of creation, bringing to mind the image of myriad things emerging from primordial mists.
In another watercolour painting, Untitled work (Lot 138) from 1967, Zao combines the compositional style and appeal of traditional Chinese painting with the subtle hues of watercolour. Here, rather than filling the pictorial space with his brushwork, Zao leaves large areas of empty space. Traditionally, empty spaces in Chinese paintings were often filled with poetry inscriptions; such inscriptions provided commentaries that enhanced the subject and conception of the painting, while also becoming a visual element of the painting themselves. And, like the white spaces in the composition, the painted characters of the inscriptions would also wind among the painting's spaces. In an original act of creativity, Zao folded the paper in two while the work was still wet, so that blurred regions of blue along the fold mirror each other in a dynamic, complementary fashion. Horizontal strokes spread across the breadth of this composition, embellished with finer and more fragmented touches, resulting in a combination of feather-light touches and broader swathes of dense, silky strokes. At the same time, rising and falling patterns of dark and light combine with regions of texture and layering to create drama. As in Turner's watercolours, light is balanced by the tension between the painting's forms and empty spaces, while a sense of speed is expressed by the confluence of urgent and relaxed brushstrokes. In Chinese traditional painting, the artist would inscribe poems or greetings in empty space to convey the lyrical connotation and the inner spirit; more importantly, it would become part of the painting. The inscription embodies the painter's own perceptions, so does the empty space. This painting is a gift for the artist's friend Patricia Sapone, as Zao Wou-Ki wrote in the lower right corner in ink: Pour Patricia Sapone. Patricia is a member of the Sapone family in Nice, France. The Sapone family has closed to many recognized artists such as Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Hans Hartung and Zao Wou-Ki since 1950s. Later on in 1970s, the Sapone family opened their space in Nice, Galerie Sapone, where Zao Wou-Ki held his solo exhibition in 1993.
Forty years later, Zao Wou-Ki produced a very different watercolour work (Lot 137). In 2008, inspired by the Impressionists, he began to go outdoors to do his painting. During that year he stopped painting oil on canvas works, no longer pursuing the weighty, powerful brushwork or the diverse textures of his earlier paintings, but instead entering a period of sunny, all-embracing optimism. With his colour palette liberated, his work becomes filled with a sense of penetrating light and a floating, flowing force that recalls the wanyue (graceful and restrained) school of Song poetry, with its gentler tones and lucid style. His painting style becomes lighter and gauzier, as lively as a breeze rippling across water. Colours here are clear and open; blue and azure tones fold and spread into a field of warmer hues, like light spreading its colours and splashing into broad curtains of natural colour. Broad, horizontal strokes stretch in a rainbow of colour along the bottom, the unrestrained lines and colours of this painting seem to have been produced in one grand sweep. The transitions between various hues in Zao Wou-Ki's work feel utterly natural, as each colour both complements and heightens neighboring tones.
In his early years, while studying with Lin Fengmian at the Hangzhou Academy of the Arts, Zao Wou-Ki learned to embrace a spirit of courageous innovation. Upon arriving in France, he at first avoided Chinese traditions, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the post-war Parisian art world. But while Paris offered him freedom from the confines of tradition, it also directed him on a long return journey back towards his own cultural traditions. Zao was thus able to employ a fusion of Eastern and Western creative vocabularies to express the indefinable: the energy and 'qi' of the universe. The French poet Henri Michaux described Zao's work this way: 'Revealing while concealing, and seemingly broken and unconnected, his lines wander at will, tracing for us the pulses of dreams and reveries.' In his watercolour works on paper, Zao Wou-Ki presents racing, flowing streams of condensed power, guiding the viewer towards imaginative spaces where wind and waves roll unhurried beneath the vastness of the moon and sky.