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Lot Essay
I.M. Pei was one of the century's most influential and respected architects. Internationally renowned for his iconic glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris, he designed over 100 buildings around the world, ranging from large-scale corporate headquarters to smaller, more intimately scaled dwellings. Emerging from the Modernist tradition, Pei's work evinced an intelligent combination of the cutting-edge and the conservative. He rigorously crafted buildings remembered for their crisp forms, luminous interiors and elegant materials designed to engage and please the public. He became one of the few architects whose inventiveness and erudition appealed equally to real estate developers, corporate chairmen and museum boards. In addition to his project for the Louvre, Pei is well known for the National Gallery of Art's East Building in Washington, D.C. (1978), the Bank of China Building in Hong Kong (1989), the Miho Museum in Shigaraki, Shiga, Japan (1997), and one of his last cultural projects, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (2008).
Integral to an understanding of I.M. Pei and his stature on the stage of international architecture is a fascinating art collection that Pei and his wife Eileen had quietly assembled during their 72-year marriage. It is a unique collection that speaks not only to the sophisticated breadth of their interests in both Eastern and Western artistic traditions, but also to the deep friendships they forged with artists in their milieu. Artists such as Barnett Newman, Jean Dubuffet, Zao Wou-Ki, Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi, many of whom epitomized the major movements of post-war and contemporary art history, and whose bold and assertive works are represented in the collection, were personal friends with whom the Peis maintained longstanding and warm relationships. As such, The Collection of Eileen and I.M. Pei is an intensely personal collaboration reflective of the couple's shared vision and brilliant insight, their artistic circle and an aesthetic sensibility that celebrated a culture of creativity.
Among Zao Wou-Ki's oil paintings, his works from the early 1950s are far rarer than his purely abstract paintings. Completed in 1951, Untitled (Lot 303) is an important work in Zao Wou-Ki's early career, not only because of its rarity, but also because of the prominent collection it belonged to. Ieoh Ming Pei met Zao Wou-Ki in 1952 at Galerie Pierre in Paris, and their life-long friendship has rested on eternal reciprocal support. In 1980, Pei wrote in a preface for an exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery: "I found Zao Wou-Ki's paintings and lithographs extremely appealing. They reminded me at once of the mystical imagery of Klee on the one hand, and the dry brush landscapes of Ni Zan on the other. Since then, we have become fast friends and I continue to follow his artistic development with the keenest of interest. It can be said without risk of exaggeration that Zao Wou-Ki is today one of the major artists on the European scene." Untitled was painted during a time when the artist tried to reject his Chinese painting training, mainly by working with a quintessentially western medium: oil on canvas. However, while the subject matter would seem like a simple picturesque scene depicting ducks among a mountain range, it is imbued with references to traditional Chinese painting composition, as well as to Chinese
Antiquity aesthetics. Much like Yuan Dynasty paintings, these seemingly unremarkable landscape and animal elements take on a new significance as they appear floating, completely lightweight, across empty space, devoid of foreground and background, echoing each other with dry and quick brushstrokes. Subtle bending brushstrokes provide a geometrical depiction of earthly elements, just like Yuan dynasty painter Ni Zan wanted to depict his world: orderly and uncluttered, engaging only one's sensory reaction. Zao Wou-Ki also took an interest in Chinese antiquities throughout his life, yet avoiding an exotic compulsion for collecting Chinese artefacts. His collection of Chinese antiquities was restricted yet curated to display his needs to feed his visual vocabulary as an artist. Amongst various objects was a Western Han dynasty incense burner in the shape of a duck, later gifted by Antoine and Simone Veil. Such an object was not unknown to him in the early 1950s, and he would have well measured the impact of such a strong symbol in his painting. It would take a decade for Zao to gradually shift his pictorial language from figurative to full abstraction. However Untitled pioneers the following steps in Zao's career as it encapsulates all of his defining features long before he would elevate them to perfection.
Integral to an understanding of I.M. Pei and his stature on the stage of international architecture is a fascinating art collection that Pei and his wife Eileen had quietly assembled during their 72-year marriage. It is a unique collection that speaks not only to the sophisticated breadth of their interests in both Eastern and Western artistic traditions, but also to the deep friendships they forged with artists in their milieu. Artists such as Barnett Newman, Jean Dubuffet, Zao Wou-Ki, Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi, many of whom epitomized the major movements of post-war and contemporary art history, and whose bold and assertive works are represented in the collection, were personal friends with whom the Peis maintained longstanding and warm relationships. As such, The Collection of Eileen and I.M. Pei is an intensely personal collaboration reflective of the couple's shared vision and brilliant insight, their artistic circle and an aesthetic sensibility that celebrated a culture of creativity.
Among Zao Wou-Ki's oil paintings, his works from the early 1950s are far rarer than his purely abstract paintings. Completed in 1951, Untitled (Lot 303) is an important work in Zao Wou-Ki's early career, not only because of its rarity, but also because of the prominent collection it belonged to. Ieoh Ming Pei met Zao Wou-Ki in 1952 at Galerie Pierre in Paris, and their life-long friendship has rested on eternal reciprocal support. In 1980, Pei wrote in a preface for an exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery: "I found Zao Wou-Ki's paintings and lithographs extremely appealing. They reminded me at once of the mystical imagery of Klee on the one hand, and the dry brush landscapes of Ni Zan on the other. Since then, we have become fast friends and I continue to follow his artistic development with the keenest of interest. It can be said without risk of exaggeration that Zao Wou-Ki is today one of the major artists on the European scene." Untitled was painted during a time when the artist tried to reject his Chinese painting training, mainly by working with a quintessentially western medium: oil on canvas. However, while the subject matter would seem like a simple picturesque scene depicting ducks among a mountain range, it is imbued with references to traditional Chinese painting composition, as well as to Chinese
Antiquity aesthetics. Much like Yuan Dynasty paintings, these seemingly unremarkable landscape and animal elements take on a new significance as they appear floating, completely lightweight, across empty space, devoid of foreground and background, echoing each other with dry and quick brushstrokes. Subtle bending brushstrokes provide a geometrical depiction of earthly elements, just like Yuan dynasty painter Ni Zan wanted to depict his world: orderly and uncluttered, engaging only one's sensory reaction. Zao Wou-Ki also took an interest in Chinese antiquities throughout his life, yet avoiding an exotic compulsion for collecting Chinese artefacts. His collection of Chinese antiquities was restricted yet curated to display his needs to feed his visual vocabulary as an artist. Amongst various objects was a Western Han dynasty incense burner in the shape of a duck, later gifted by Antoine and Simone Veil. Such an object was not unknown to him in the early 1950s, and he would have well measured the impact of such a strong symbol in his painting. It would take a decade for Zao to gradually shift his pictorial language from figurative to full abstraction. However Untitled pioneers the following steps in Zao's career as it encapsulates all of his defining features long before he would elevate them to perfection.