Zao Wou-ki & the Cernuschi Museum !

Buddha Amida (from Meguro area, Tokyo)

“The works of Zao Wou-ki as well as the ceramics and Chinese bronzes from his collection joined the collections of the Musée Cernuschi at the beginning of 2016, according to the wishes of Mrs Françoise Marquet-Zao.

Seventy years earlier, in 1946, the visitors of the first post-war exhibition of contemporary Chinese paintings discovered the work of Zao Wou-ki at the Musée Cernuschi. The works of this 26-years-old painter whose name at the time meant little to anyone where featured among those of Qi Baishi (1864-1957), Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), or Lin Fengmian (1900-1991), who represented the prevailing trends of the time. The link between Zao Wou-ki and the Musée Cernuschi was Vadime Elisseeff, a young curator of the museum who had met Zao Wou-ki in China during the war. Straightaway he intuitively recognized the painter’s immense talent to the point that he had a whole room devoted to his work in the 1946 exhibition. A young unknown artist was welcomed as a master, and Parisian critics were surprised by his work – sometimes comparing it to Dufy’s --, which seemed to be firmly establishing itself on the French scene. Zao Wou-ki was still in China, but his work had already made its way to the Parisian public. He would travel to Paris and settle in Montparnasse two years later.

The donation is comprised of four distinct and significant groups of works, allowing us to understand the specific links between Zao Wou-ki and Paris, even before he embarked for France, but also the importance of his Chinese roots, which expressed themselves in his work and re-emerged at several pivotal moments of his career.

The early works of Zao Wou-ki – portraits reminiscent of Matisse, delicate nudes, ephemeral landscapes, profiles of animals seemingly escaped from a Han tombstone – were created at the end of the 1940s between China and France. They evoke the key moment when Zao Wou-ki’s abstract work was still in gestation.

The second group consists of abstract works in ink created from the 1970s. In actual fact, Zao Wou-ki had to overcome his own resistance before he allowed himself to return to Indian ink, which would occupy a significant place in his work up to his death. The donated works enable us to follow the path of the ink decade by decade and to assess Zao Wou-ki’s constant innovations in this field.

The ceramic works are undoubtedly perfect embodiments of this taste for experimentation that characterized this artist until his final years. From the pieces of the 1950s, whose glaze effects and patterns inspired by archaic writings evoke his contemporary oil paintings, to the larger works of the 2000s, we can implicitly perceive the risks taken by Zao Wou-ki when he ventured on the borders of his own territory.

The last group consists of the bronzes and celadons collected by Zao Wou-ki. These works, evoking several millennia of Chinese history, fit perfectly into the collections of the Musée Cernuschi, which embrace both antiquity and modernity. They allow us to perceive the secret relationship that unites the works of Zao Wou-ki with these objects originating from the highest antiquity.” By the Musée Cernuschi.

Photos / Copyright Catherine Pulleiro