Memories of groundbreaking artist

Provided to China Daily

Zao's groundbreaking style also makes him especially collectible. As the Chinese art specialist Helen Szaday von Gizycki, founder of the Paris Fine Art Consultancy, explains of the abstract artist: "There's an authenticity and a deep, total commitment in his work. It's scholar's art." She notes that once collectors buy a Zao Wou-ki, they keep it, adding that, "Now that he's passed away, it's hard to find someone who can take his place."

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Born in Beijing in 1920 to an imperial family, Zao Wou-ki learned calligraphy from his grandfather at age 10. At 14, he enrolled at the Hangzhou School of Fine Art, where he later became an assistant teacher. Zao, however, was frustrated with the traditional teaching methods that emphasized technical training and, reputedly, while sitting for his exam on Chinese ink painting, streaked ink on paper and signed it "Rocks Painted by Zao Wou-ki".

It would have led to an immediate dismissal, had the president of the academy, Lin Fengmian, not intervened. Lin himself had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, where Zao himself would later move to, studying under Emile Othon Friesz and attending the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. His emigration to France in 1948 would not see him return to China for nearly a quarter of a century.

In Paris, Zao fell in among the post-war avant-garde artists, such as Pierre Soulange, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, as well as the writer Henri Michaux, who paid homage to Zao's work in eight poems. Zao was also notably influenced by the Abstract and Surrealist painter Paul Klee, who once said, "Color and I are one. I am a painter." (A retrospective of Klee's work is currently on at Tate Modern, London).

After Zao's first solo show in Paris, at Galerie Creuze in 1949, he would gain further encouragement from Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro-and French impressionists, such as Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse.