ZAO WOU-KI (1920-2013)
Zao Wou-Ki was born in Peking the first of February in 1920. A few months after, his family moved to Shanghai. The family T’chao, belongs to the ancient dynasty of Song (10-13 after J.C.). T’chao Wou-Ki – Wou-Ki was his first name – took the pseudonym of Zao Wou-Ki when he arrived in France. In 1967, he participated in the French pavilion during the International Exhibition of Montreal in Canada. He then travelled to North America before he stayed in Mexico with the painter Ruffino Tamayo and his wife Olga, who had met in 1950. As a part of the Music Festival in Salzburg, Zao Wou-Ki directed the summer seminar that had been created by the painter Oskar Kokoschka.
Zao Wou-Ki participated in several group exhibitions : “The non-figurative painting of the second school of Paris”, 1946-1962. “101 masterpieces from the Gandur Foundation for Art” at the Rath Museum in Geneva and “Pictorial abstraction, 1949-1969 : Works selected from the Guggenheim collection” at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The exhibition “Chinese artists in Paris, 1920-1958. From Lin Fengmian to Zao Wou-Ki” organized at the Cernuschi Museum in Paris permitted to trace the beginning of Zao Wou-Ki in Paris, in the logic of the exchanges between France and China in the 20th century.
“I like that people wander in my paintings, just as I wander myself while making them”, Zao Wou-Ki liked to say.
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