M+ Museum receives significant donations of works from Chinese-French master Zao Wou-Ki, which consists of prints and paintings spanning the artist’s entire career.
Donated by Zao Wou-Ki’s daughter Sin-May Roy Zao, the gift comprises 12 works, including nine prints, two oil paintings and one watercolour painting ranging in dates from 1945 to 2005 – spanning almost the artist’s entire professional career. This is M+’s first acquisition of Zao’s work and the biggest donation of his work ever to an Asian museum.
One of the most important modern masters, Zao Wou-Ki was a fixture in the mid-and-late-twentieth-century international art world, hailed as a lodestar for generations of Chinese artists and a trailblazer who achieved success in Paris by integrating his Chinese aesthetic heritage with European artistic mediums.
The Chinese-French artist is best known for majestic abstract oil paintings that are dramatic in colour and light. His prints and watercolours show a subtler, more delicate side, but are no less lyrical and bold in terms of colour, technique and composition.
This donated body of work provides an intimate portrayal of the impressive trajectory of a twentieth-century master. Among them, Open Air Theatre (1945) was made when Zao was still in China and already known for his avant-garde experimentations. Piazza Siena (1951) documents a stop in the Italian city on Zao’s European Grand Tour between 1950 and 1952.
“Zao Wou-Ki is undoubtedly one of the few overseas Chinese artists who have transcended cultural boundaries and have been truly recognised in multiple contexts and narratives,” says Doryun Chong, M+’s deputy director, curatorial and chief curator.
The public can view three of Zao’s prints featured in the exhibition Individuals, Networks, Expressions in the South Galleries at M+ after the museum reopens.
