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Oiseaux volent partout (Birds Fly Everywhere)
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1952 Oil on canvas 81 x 100 cm Signed lower right Wou-ki in Chinese and ZAO in French |
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Estimate
26,000,000 - 40,000,000 6,118,000 - 9,412,000 795,100 - 1,223,200
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Sold Price
63,200,000 15,228,916 1,965,174
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Travelling had always been a way for Chinese scholars to experience new sights; by visiting famous mountains and rivers, Chinese scholars perceived and understood the philosophy of life. Similarly, modern painters are interested in visiting museums, exploring human landscapes and natural scenes for inspiration.
During the first 3 years after arriving in Paris, Zao Wou-ki made his living through painting; After 3 years, financially more stable, he travelled around Europe for looking for new inspirations. Between 1951 and 1952, he visited Spain, Italy, Holland, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland; staying an extended time in Italy, studying buildings of European cities, which was helpful for constructing the spatial layout in his paintings. And the colors and imagination that are particular to the Mediterranean became a source of inspiration for him. After returning to Paris, he created a large number of paintings of landscapes, buildings, and nature.
The poet and art critic, Henri Michaux, wrote in the preface of the catalogue at the first exhibition in New York in 1952, "Showing while concealing, breaking down and making the lines shake, tracing, wandering, walking detours and squiggles with a dreamer's spirit, this is what Zao Wou-ki likes and suddenly, with the same festive air which animates the Chinese countryside and towns, the painting appears quivering, joyous and a little amusing with an orchard of signs." At that time, the studio of sculptor Giacometti was adjacent to his own, and he also mentioned that he was very fond of Zao Wou-ki "It is a trembling squiggly quotation".
The "An orchard of signs", the conversion from representational image to non-representational image, was the inspiration of Paul Klee's paintings. In 1951, when he visited the painting exhibition of Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, Zao Wou-ki marveled at the poetic feeling of freedom, lightness, and vividness of the paintings and such mysterious poetic feeling was readily embraced by him. After his return to Paris, Zao studied and perceived the secret in it and tried to integrate the poetic atmosphere of Mi Fu (1051-1107), Wang Wei (8th Century), and Ni Tsan (1301-1374) with the signs of Klee. In addition, during his visit to Mediterranean cities, Byzantium art, Egyptian art, and the symbolism of church wall paintings all had some influence on the oriental style of his paintings.
In the early 1950s, Zao painstakingly studied the expression of space through perspective on plain images and the composition of objects. The art critic Daniel Marchesseau says, "He refound a voice for his brush, between delicate orientalism and classic architecture." The embroidery-like line structure constitutes the unique style of his paintings. This stage is of key significance for his later transition to expressive and abstract painting style.
"Oiseaux volent partout" was completed in July 1952, when Zao returned from his tour in Europe. The painting uses slender lines to depict busy boats, men and animals promenading at leisure, and the omnipresent flying birds, all of which constitute a joyful carnival, reminiscent of Venice. In this painting, objects are simplified into lines and signs in grey brown. The carefully designed poetic space is the landscape created by the artist from the repository of his memory.
Art critic Jean Meymarie once wittily describes the brief structure of Zao's workings in the early 1950s as "graphic nervous system", where different styles of lines, dark and light, sharp and soft, coexist in sophisticated and solid union and present a varying effect. Guided by the lines of the painting, the viewer walks into an immense world that has no borders. In the plane perspective, birds fly freely, lightly, and harmoniously. The close-to-childish layout by Zao Wou-ki depicts a beautiful world.
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