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Lot Essay
‘I wanted to paint what cannot be seen, the breath of life, the wind, the movement, the life of forms, the colours’ outbreak and their fusion.’ —Zao Wou-Ki
1954 marks the beginning of the period when Zao starts to consciously insert core elements of Chinese culture into his works, while bringing into play his own knowledge of Chinese painting. The oracle-bone series show Zao’s direct integration of calligraphy into his paintings with symbols evocative of the earliest known form of Chinese writing from the Shang dynasty called oracle-bones script on ox bones and turtle plastrons. The old practice of engraving characters on the animal material had the religious purpose to ask deities questions relating to the weather and fortune. Therefore, Zao takes up the spiritual component in relation to natural elements, which was already embedded in this tradition, while returning to the origins of scripture. Many of Zao’s works from this period illustrate his ambition to utilize abstract forms to grasp the power of nature.
Painted in 1956, Untitled is featured in almost all of the artist’s important publications, as it stands out as an iconic work that encapsulates Zao’s oracle-bone period in its maturity. At this point of his career, the artist had mastered the integration of text into painting. In the composition, the characters both accentuate and blend into the layered background, wandering across the canvas like lines in the oracle-bone script, as if conjuring up the pictographic origin of the script. Zao’s works from the oracle-bone period are profound echoes of nature. Every painting is an abstract landscape that embodies the artist’s distinctive style, as it evokes the ever-shifting forces of and life in nature. Among the works from Zao’s oracle-bone period, which lasted only five years, the present work is the only painting that features the 'red sun' symbol. The block of red near the top of the painting calls to mind the rising sun and its golden rays of light, as it emanates a bustling vitality and a poetic touch. This kind of composition and imagery is rarely seen among the known works from Zao’s oracle-bone series. In addition, the present work is a hanging central scroll painting at the ratio of 1:2, a unique format that is frequently used in Chinese literati painting. It illustrates Zao’s exploration in merging Chinese and Western cultures in his work ten years after his arrival in Paris. Meanwhile, the use of vertical composition allows the oracle-bone script symbols to flow freely, as if they were totems rising from the bottom of the painting, resonating with a sense of rhythm and motion. The composition is predominantly in dark yellow, the colour of the sky and the earth in classical Chinese culture, which symbolises auspiciousness and peace.
1954 marks the beginning of the period when Zao starts to consciously insert core elements of Chinese culture into his works, while bringing into play his own knowledge of Chinese painting. The oracle-bone series show Zao’s direct integration of calligraphy into his paintings with symbols evocative of the earliest known form of Chinese writing from the Shang dynasty called oracle-bones script on ox bones and turtle plastrons. The old practice of engraving characters on the animal material had the religious purpose to ask deities questions relating to the weather and fortune. Therefore, Zao takes up the spiritual component in relation to natural elements, which was already embedded in this tradition, while returning to the origins of scripture. Many of Zao’s works from this period illustrate his ambition to utilize abstract forms to grasp the power of nature.
Painted in 1956, Untitled is featured in almost all of the artist’s important publications, as it stands out as an iconic work that encapsulates Zao’s oracle-bone period in its maturity. At this point of his career, the artist had mastered the integration of text into painting. In the composition, the characters both accentuate and blend into the layered background, wandering across the canvas like lines in the oracle-bone script, as if conjuring up the pictographic origin of the script. Zao’s works from the oracle-bone period are profound echoes of nature. Every painting is an abstract landscape that embodies the artist’s distinctive style, as it evokes the ever-shifting forces of and life in nature. Among the works from Zao’s oracle-bone period, which lasted only five years, the present work is the only painting that features the 'red sun' symbol. The block of red near the top of the painting calls to mind the rising sun and its golden rays of light, as it emanates a bustling vitality and a poetic touch. This kind of composition and imagery is rarely seen among the known works from Zao’s oracle-bone series. In addition, the present work is a hanging central scroll painting at the ratio of 1:2, a unique format that is frequently used in Chinese literati painting. It illustrates Zao’s exploration in merging Chinese and Western cultures in his work ten years after his arrival in Paris. Meanwhile, the use of vertical composition allows the oracle-bone script symbols to flow freely, as if they were totems rising from the bottom of the painting, resonating with a sense of rhythm and motion. The composition is predominantly in dark yellow, the colour of the sky and the earth in classical Chinese culture, which symbolises auspiciousness and peace.