PROVENANCE :
Galerie de France, Paris
Private collection, Europe

EXHIBITED :
“Zao Wou-ki - Oeuvres Récentes”, Galerie de France, Paris, France, 1960

ILLUSTRATED :
Zao Wou-ki - Oeuvres Récentes”, Paris, France 1960, black and whiteillustrated, p. 38
Zao Wou-ki, J. Leymarie, Editions Hier et Demain, Paris, France, 1978,black and white illustrated, no. 289, p. 283
Zao Wou-ki, J. Leymarie, Editions Cercle d’Art, Paris, France, 1986,black and white illustrated, no.321, p. 323
This painting will be listed in the Catalogue Raisonné compiled byMadame Françoise Marquet and Monsieur Yann Hendgen

This painting is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity issued byAtelier Zao Wou-ki.

THE LIGHT OF REVELATION
to Eternity and Beyond.

Resolute, reserved, and resounding, the light that breaks through darkness brings a new world, exuding a powerful force in the shapeless chaos, and emitting a tremor that travels a thousand miles. This is Zao Wou-ki’s brilliant 1960 piece “26.01.60”. In that year, the artist reached an unprecedented peak in his artistic career, merging eastern and western cultures, and pushing art into a new realm.

ACCUMULATING ENERGY ON THE WAY TO SUCCESS

Zao Wou-ki went to Paris with his newly wedded wife Xie Jinglan in 1948. That world capital of art appealed to his ambitions in art, and he held his first solo exhibition in Paris a year later. While staying in Switzerland for an art exhibition in 1951, Zao Wou-ki was deeply inspired by Paul Klee’s (1879-1940) paintings. With this inspiration, Zao broke away from the restraints of realism, incorporating symbols and imagination into his paintings. He found deeper meaning in abstract forms and agile lines that met his personal need for a visual vocabulary, which prompted him to explore Chinese culture and led to his breakthrough oracle bone script era. After that, Zao Wou-ki continued to travel the world, accumulating creative energy, and steadily solidifying the development of his purely abstract style. But during this period, Zao Wou-ki also faced a major turning point in his personal life. His wife Xie Jinglan, with whom he had been so close, left him in 1957, and this was a huge blow to the artist. He met Chan May-Kan in Hong Kong the following year. The two fell in love and returned to Paris to wed. Only then was he able to overcome his grief and embrace happiness once more. With a clear direction of creative style and newly-found love, Zao Wou-ki continued to accumulate creative energy. By 1960, the symbols had turned into colors, lines, and brush strokes. The recognizable concrete forms had fallen away. In formlessness, there lay the implicit promise of infinity of transformation, unleashing a vast imagination. Here, melding the spirit of Eastern and Western cultures, Zao’s lyrical abstraction was born.

In contrast with the slow, meticulous rhythm with which he had previously worked, Zao Wouki had a creative burst in 1960. His mature artistic style and inner calm gave him an endless font of inspiration to draw on and boundless new artistic fields to explore. Unlike the large paintings that started appearing in the mid-1960s, the artist mostly painted on medium-sized canvas in 1960. “26.01.60” is one of those paintings. But with mature structures, hidden tensions, and swift brush strokes, the energy within “26.01.60” is every bit as strong as the larger pieces he would later paint. Zao Wou-ki’s achievement in the art world was also praised by the world, and in this year his reputation reached a new peak. From June to July he had his second solo exhibition at the Galerie de France. At the time, the Gallerie de France played an important role in representing important post-war abstract artists such as Hans Hartung (1904-1989), Pierre Soulages (1919), and Alfred Manessier (1911-1993).In the fall of 1960, he represented France at the Venice Biennale for the first time, once again captivating the eyes of the world with his mature lyrical abstract style.

BURSTING FORTH LIKE THE PRIMORDIAL DAWN

Zao Wou-ki’s majestic work from his peak in 1960, “26.01.60”, reflects the artist’s inner philosophy at the time. He used iron gray and dark brown to create a deep, turbulent mystic space. Like the beginning of time, a primordial chaos from the dawn of the universe. Amidst this chaotic unknown, delicate, sharp, and lively brush strokes unfold horizontally from the center of the canvas. Thin but strong brush strokes tightly interlace. Like a sudden cyclone, or fluttering wings, they display the intense and vibrant rhythms of life. The silvery white light shines through from the center, as if galloping from myriad light years away, or from the other side of the universe. Art historian Hsiao Chong-ray has described Zao Wou-ki’s 1960s work in the book Masters of Chinese Painting: - ZAO Wou kiAnd it is this world that reflects a driving force deep within, displaying the artist’s strong and fearless will to dive into the unknown.

Here, Zao Wou-ki used simple, limited colors, like the primordial earth, primitive yet full of possibility. He used cool tones, but incites flaming emotions, spreading boundless imagery within the bounded canvas, like a gigantic reach of space. Within it, unseen forces chase one another, surge, and form, encompassing all that exists between earth and sky. As former French prime minister, poet, and art critic Dominiquede Villepin said: “His paintings faced life, and his life faced painting. He threw himself in the future, working towards progress and an unknown ending. Speaking from this insight, his paintings are a kind of wisdom.”(Excerpted from DominiquedeVillepin’s book Dans le labyrinthe des lumières, “Zao Wou-ki”, published by Hong Kong Kwai Fung Art Publisher, 2010, pg. 20.) In all its glorious magnificence, Zao Wou-ki’s work always has a poetic tone, and a musical rhythm. The same applies equally to “26.01.60”. This has deeply-ingrained connections with the Eastern influences in the artist’s blood.Zao Wou-ki once said in an interview: “People all follow one tradition, but I follow two.” This demonstrates how Chinese and French cultures influenced him. He had been steeped in the traditions of the southern Chinese landscapes since his youth, but had an epiphany about the spirit of Chinese philosophy after he moved to Paris. Perhaps it was that tacit understanding emphasized by Laozi and Zhuangzi that quietly propelled him towards abstract art. In the 1960s, the artist had yet to invest time and effort into researching ink wash techniques. His artistic vocabulary here is still very much Western. Yet it is not hard to feel the intangible inner spirit of Chinese landscapes and the boundless imagery of Eastern thought among the undulating lines of “26.01.60” – so vast, so boundless, to eternity.