PROVENANCE:

Opera Gallery, Singapore

Private collection, Asia

This painting is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity issued by Opera Gallery, Singapore.

Straddling the millennium, Zao Wou-ki's oil painting "27.12.00" was completed late in 2000, and there is every sign that the artist, well established as one of the greatest Chinese painters alive, has stayed true to his original creative notions﹣namely, to continue exploring new moods and avenues of expression. The basic approach is, however, unchanged in this symphony of aquamarine and celestial blue tones, as Zao's bold, unrestrained energy is all over the canvas. In fact, the artist was so charged right around the new start of the new millennium that he managed to create a 7.5-meter broad triptych and a series of other large-scale paintings in the years that followed the completion of this lot. One cannot but admire Zao's almost unlimited drive and artistic inspiration.

In his 2005 article 'Clairvoyance de Zao Wou-ki,' eminent French art critic Daniel Abadie wrote about the new visual worlds opened up by the Chinese master's recent oil paintings, focusing particularly on his repeated use of blue hues in these works:

"... For the same reason, a few years Zao began to employ a great variety of blue tones in his work, always applied with smooth, fluent brushstrokes to create incredible spaces that are reminiscent of the sky as well as the ocean. In these fascinating mélanges of blue, the artist enters the domain of completely abstracted beauty, speaking directly through color in a way that words can never grasp or explain. And it is never one single hue or shade that stands out, but instead a whole collection of subtly variegated colors, a veritable jamboree of 'blue' ranging from the lighthearted and playful to the gloomy and wistful, all of it punctuated with soft dabs of rose or pastel white, and oscillating between the most charming and 'adorable,' as Hölderlin would have defined it, and the profoundly stirring and dramatic. And then, the whole composition shines with a limpid light originating somewhere in its background, making the shades bleed into one enthralling wall of color, every tinge enhancing the whole and in turn enhanced by it. All this bears witness to the fact that Zao is still capable of losing himself in his art, and of simply 'smearing and daubing' to his heart's content." (Pour la même raison, la peinture de Zao Wou-ki a, depluis quelque années, donné à la couleur bleue, à sa fluidité qui est aussi bien celle du ciel que de la mer, une place préondérante. Mais si l'on parle de «couleur bleue» on révèle de fait tout ce que la peintures de Zao Wou-ki propose et que le langage ne peut plus traduire. Il n'y a en effet, dans ces effets, dans ce tableaux bleues, aucune «couleur bleue» mais une multitude de couleurs de bleu, du plus léger au plus dense, ponctué de rose ou de blanc, du plus chaud au plus froid, «adorable» au dire d'Hölderlin ou dramatique, jouant des transparences, de arrière-plans, des lumières qui font qu'aucun de ces bleus n'est semblable à une autre et qui explique pourqoui la peinture peut encore aujourd'hui s'émerveiller à poursuivre ce qu'il appelle simplement son «barbouillage».) (Daniel Abadie, 'Clarivoyance de Zao Wou-ki,' Zao Wou-ki, Peintures et encres de Chine, 1948-2005, Editions Hazan, Biarritz, France, 2005, pp. 20-21)

In "27.12.00", the passion and exuberance seen in the lines and brushwork of Zao's early work have mellowed somewhat, giving way to a tranquil lucidity and gentle haziness—a far cry from the intensely flamboyant palette of the artist's beginnings. Daniel Abadie's take on Zao's latest output is that the artist no longer needs to prove anything to anybody, and is therefore free to take more risks and venture into new, unpredictable areas of artistic expression. Anything goes now, and the results of such experimentation are often amazingly successful. Other art critics also describe Zao's recent work as "paintings of serenity," and as having the quality of "natural dreams." D. W. captures the spirit of the artist's newest paintings in a nutshell when he says, "Zao's latest work is not so much about overt silence as about a profound inner peace and calm, the kind emanating from a person completely involved in his work, focusing with every fiber of his being on the task at hand. Because every little brushstroke, every single line contributes to the magnificence of the finished painting." ("Les toiles de Zao Wou-ki ne sont donc pas muettes, mais profondément silencieuses, comme un qui travaille sans relêche, regarde, et avec d'infinies précautions reprend. Parce que chaque trait, chaque touche modifie le grand tout du tableau") (D. W., La voie royale de Zao Wou-ki, Journal l'Humanité, Paris, July 2, 2002)