Lot n° 27
Estimation :
15000 - 20000
EUR
ZAO WOU-KI (1920-2013)
Sails at sea 1953
Lithograph in 5 colours,
500 x 655 mm. on plate; 330 x 490 mm. the image
signed, bottom right, and annotated, bottom left: "Single proof with the stone of brown reversed".
Provenance: French private
collection since at least 1966.
Bibliography :
Agerup, 81 (for the version with the standard colours, in 120 copies).
In 1946, then professor at the Chongqing School of Fine Arts, Zao Wou-Ki met Vadime Elisseeff, cultural attaché at the French Embassy, who took a liking for his work and urged him to consider the continuation of his career in Paris. Two years later, after a 36-day cruise, Zao Wou-Ki set sail for France. He settled in Paris, in Montparnasse, took lessons at the Grande Chaumière and made friends with young artists from various backgrounds: Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Hans Hartung, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Maria Helene Vieira da Silva, etc. His personality blossomed.
In 1949, he met the printer Desjobert, a collaborator of Picasso, Maillol, Laurencin and Lhote, who introduced him to the technique of lithography, which Zao would love all his life. In 1950, during a trip to Switzerland, he discovered the work of Paul Klee, who had died ten years earlier, which left a deep impression on him. This marked the beginning of a short period marked by the imprint of the Swiss painter, of which Claude Roy would say: Klee was to be a mediator, a marvellous recourse against two perils that threatened the young artist at the time: to remain a painter rooted excessively in the admirable past of his people, or to find himself aggressively detached from it, Europeanized, and perhaps, by the same token, denatured.
In this spirit, Zao began a series of Marines, of which Voiles à la Mer is one of the most beautiful examples. It is worth pointing out a certain kinship with the watercolour Bateaux à Voiles, from 1927 (fig.2).
The work was first presented to the public at the exhibition devoted to Zao Wou-Ki'
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