Zao Wou-ki is an artist who is good at hiding poems in his paintings. So his paintings can move poets very easily. Many books and compilations study Zao Wou-ki's art and among them, many of the reviews and appreciations come from poetic art reviewers. Zao Wou-ki's works are full of lyricism and abstraction. He uses Western oil paints to form splashed-ink landscapes creating views which seem to have been painted by a poet. His art resonates both at home and abroad. He is a leading master of Chinese abstract art in modern times. The poet Wang Wei (8th Century) in the Tang Dynasty introduced poems into his paintings and created "paintings in poetry and poetry in paintings" for the first time. By the time of the Song Dynasty, based on the theory of literary paintings, Su Shi (1037-1101), Huang Ting-chien (1045-1105), Mi Fu (1051-1107) and his son, added calligraphy to their paintings developing ink and wash paintings. Su Shi's "scholar paintings" made "literary paintings" take a big step ahead and become more established. The landscape paintings of the Northern Song Dynasty cherish lofty ideals of landscape. When painting landscape, the artists didn't care about realistic skills but creating a void for traveling meditation. Examining the entire life creations of Zao Wou-ki, we can say he is a new modern literary painter. And he has been traveling around the world in a lifetime to witness the pulse movement of the times in decades. His art influence still gives a valuable feedback in today's world.

The name Wou-ki in Chinese evokes a meaning that is both mysterious and full of grandeur. The Chinese characters mean the beginning and returning of the world in Chinese Taoism. Zao's abstract paintings reflect his opinions on the cosmic inventory. Some critics describe him as a dislocated artist. That is mostly because he was born into Chinese culture but lives in the art world of Paris. Just as his body has been relocated in the real world, so his soul swings between East and West. He has gone through self-examinations and the culminations of tradition and creation. His experiences and pursuits in life have made Zao Wou-ki step across the boundaries of social worlds and enable him to show his audience a sense of beauty.

His paintings record the milestones of his life. Both his geographical movements and his spiritual pursuits influence his art style. Zao Wou-ki was born in 1921 in Beijing, a city with a long history. Zao's family was very cultural. They are royal descendants from the Song Dynasty. He lived in Nan Tong as a child and then moved to Shanghai. His erudite ancestral family gave Zao the chance to come into contact with calligraphy, painting and literature, and enabled him to cultivate a culture of art and the humanities. He moved from Shanghai to Hangzhou when he was 14, and entered a key art school in the south--Hangzhou National College of Art . During this period he learned theories of line drawing, Chinese painting, and Western painting. Studying for six years he acquired a deep foundation in painting under the tutelage of renowned masters, Lin Fengmian (1900-1991), Pan Tianshou (1897-1971), and Wu Dayu (1903-1988). When he was 20 years old, he, his family and the school moved to Chongqing, Sichuan to escape from war. These frustrations never lessened his desire for creation. He held his first solo exhibition in Chongqing, and also attended important group exhibitions of Chinese modern paintings showing works with his seniors Guan Liang (1900-1986), Ding Yanyong (1902-1978), and Li Chun-shan (1912-1984). When the war ended in 1945, Zao went back to Shanghai and school in Hangzhou.

China was restless at the beginning of the twentieth century: the country was torn apart by warlords, wars raged inside and out, starvation and depression were everywhere. Though Zao Wou-ki came from a rich family, he saw the unrest with his own eyes. China was in an even more restless period after the Second World War. People moved on mass to escape disaster. The general populace lived excessively anxious and insecure lives. With constant conflict and suffering of body and soul, painting became a refuge to escape to from the endless turmoil in Zao Wou-ki's memory. His passion for painting grew with each passing day, and painting was the real refuge for his soul. He knew that it was out of the question to stay safely to paint in China. So in 1948, with the agreement of his father, he left with his wife to pursue the ideal of creating freely in France. The ship he took that year was also the one that had taken his respected teacher Lin Fengmian to France to explore Western painting 30 years before. His predecessor had beaten a short track through brambles and thorns, and now Zao was meeting the pageant of European abstract painting with respect. Soon he would become a standout member of the New Paris School in the European art scene.

Zao Wou-ki still used figurative paintings as subjects in his early years in Paris. His paintings had fresh, simple but elegant tones and were involved with landscape, architecture, and nature, things which could be seen in real life. The studio of sculptor Jacometti was next to Zao's, and Jacometti appreciated a kind of squiggly and quivering feel in the figurative part of Zao Wou-ki's paintings. This skill was Zao's good calligraphy foundation from his childhood. From the beginning of the 1950s, Zao mixed lines and signs in his paintings which he later simplified into abstract totems generally. His paintings moved away from narrative description to creating poetic free spaces. After 1954, his paintings were influenced and enlightened by Chinese rubbings from the Han Dynasty and oracle bone inscriptions. He used cursive script influences in his paintings to blend into the poetic imagery of Shi Tao (1641-1718) and Ba Da (c.1626-1705), combined with the frankness of American action painting. His abstract style became defined.

Zao Wou-ki once said that it was Cézanne who enlightened him to get to know the nature of China, and Western paintings which allowed him to get more close to the soul of Chinese traditional art. He said that others obeyed one tradition, but he obeyed two. And the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures made Zao Wou-ki use his brush to sweep and dash freely to create a more luxuriant creation space. In the 1960s, according to Zao Wou-ki, his art experienced unprecedented fast development and a thriving creativity in his paintings. His new studio was built in 1963. It was a special place, and according to his design for the windows, the light came from the north, which made him control the density of colors so that the sun could not influence the delicate changes of his painting colors.

In 1964, art critic Pierre Schneider invited 15 contemporary artists to attend an exhibition "Peinture hors dimensions", and Zao Wou-ki was one of them. At that time, the American art scene was dominated by large-scale paintings. So while continuing to work on the small-scale paintings that Europe preferred, Zao Wou-ki began to create large scale paintings making large classic works.

"17.4.64" is based on a copper-colored yellow brown tone that was only characteristic in the 1960s.The painter's thoughts are rushing in the large space with abundant quivering color gradation and slight sensitive jumping lines. Both lightness and heaviness show in the painting. The emotion is like circuitous windings at this moment but instantaneously the seas are rising and surging to strike the hearts of people watching. Though facing fear in his heart and depression in his soul, Zao Wou-ki still uses his harmoniousness-loving free will to give an upward spirit to his painting. He has mastered the secret of color and light-shadow space. His style looks splendid with abundant painting elements. Zao Wou-ki was born in China with its long history. Compared with European abstract painters at the same time, Zao's cultural heritage, and ancient historic tracing in his paintings give him more abundant background elements. Over hundreds of years, Chinese painting masters used literary devices and ink plays, high mountains, and fishing in seclusion to express themselves in their paintings. They were not painting real landscapes but expressing their innermost microcosms. Zao Wou-ki also cherishes a grand ideal to open a space for himself to meditate freely in the studio on the foreign land.

He painted an ever-changing imagined world in this confident and emotional painting. The famous French art critic Henri Michaux showed his appreciation for Zao Wou-ki's paintings of this period. He wrote, "In Zao Wou-ki's paintings, of gigantic dimensions, in proportion to the extent of his feelings, there are – magnifying transfer – ever increasingly powerful assumptions of earth. Enormous masses, when the time comes, must gain height. This nature recreates for Zao Wou-ki a splendid geological period. Here predominate levitations, mixing, upheaval. It is well-known that Zao Wou-ki's canvases have a particular virtue: they are beneficent." (refer to the preface, Zao Wou-ki, edited by Claude Roy, second revision, published in 1970) Zao Wou-ki uses a modern way to display a grand heritage of spiritual art concretely and veritably. Facing an age full of great change, this painting enables the watchers to find dignity again and spirit up an open and upward free will.