ZAO WOU-KI – INKS AND WATERCOLOURS (1948-2009)
2019-03-11The exhibitions devoted to Zao Wou-Ki at kamel mennour in Paris and London revolve around inks and watercolours produced between 1948 and 2009: a panorama of fifty works with the ultimate spotlight on the creative liveliness of the artist’s final working decade. The choice of 1948 was not random: this was the year of Zao’s migration from China to Paris. Educated in the privileged, scholarly environment of a family whose origins could be traced back to the Song dynasty (960–1279), the budding artist who began his studies at the art school in Hangzhou in 1935 first came into contact with European painting as a teenager.
His situation, then, was nothing if not paradoxical. Exposed to two age-old but diametrically opposed cultures – Chinese and European – he was nonetheless out of phase during the 1930s and 1940s: the little information that reached him regarding the kind of Western art that would now be described as hyper-contemporary was strictly rudimentary and his two immediately postwar points of reference were Matisse and Picasso.
Opposite – Sans titre (Paris septembre), 2007
Exhibition runs through to April 13th, 2019
Kamel Mennour
47, rue Saint-André des arts
75006 Paris
France
