Oil on canvas

50 × 84 cm. 19 5/8 × 33 1/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and English on bottom right; inscribed in English, signed in Chinese and English on the reverse; signed and described in English, sized and titled on the stretcher

LITERATURE
1977, Zao Wou-Ki, Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, Pl.8
1978, Zao Wou-ki, Editions Hier et Demain, Paris, p. 306, pl. 460
1979, Zao Wou-ki, Editions Rizzoli, New York, p. 306, pl. 460
1986, Zao Wou-ki, Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris, p. 345, pl. 489
2013, Literature Modern Abstract Paintings, J.P. Art Center, Kaohsiung, p.9
EXHIBITED
Oct 21 – Nov 22 1977, Zao Wou-Ki, Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo
Sep 10 – 18 2013, Literature Modern Abstract Paintings Exhibition, J.P. Art Center, Kaohsiung

PROVENANCE
Eugenia and Joan De Muga, Spain (1977-2011)
Private Collection, Asia
7 Jun 2015, Ravenel Taipei Spring Auction, Lot 237
Acquired directly by present important Asian collector from the above

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Foundation Zao Wou-Ki

Note： Eugenia and Joan De Muga were the owner of Galeria Joan Prats, Spain. The family also operates renowned Ediciones Poligrafa of Barcelona

Note： This work will be included in the artist's forthcoming catalogue raisonné prepared by Françoise Marquet and Yann Hendgen (Information provided by Foundation Zao Wou-Ki)

Pursue the Universe, Homage to Heaven and Earth with Infinite Pride
Zao Wou-Ki's First Diptych Painting 23.09.76 is Brilliantly Unveiled!

From the West Lake to the Seine River, the art life of Zao Wou-Ki becomes part of the art history witnessing the Chinese artists to achieve great success overseas. He combines Western techniques and theories with Chinese aesthetics, earning fame as loud as the Western masters. His works have been exhibited in the Louvre Museum in France, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, and have been collected by more than 130 public institutions around the world, demonstrating the boundless charm of his works.

Innovation in Form: A Masterpiece of Fine and Rare Diptych in the 1970s

In 1958, after a ten-year study, Zao finally realized the transformation from semi-figurative to abstract painting. In the prevailing abstraction art in Europe and America, he established the unique self-mark style. Since the 1960s, he has been extensively involved in Western painting forms, looking for innovative expressions. Among them, the form of polyptychs of religious paintings during the Renaissance inspired him a lot. Traditional western altar paintings often form the narrative boundary of “heaven, earth, hell” in two or three joints, with the spatial divisions forming the visual moving points, which echoes the multi-faceted form of Chinese screens and albums. Starting from this, Zao began his trial of polyptych form and created the first triptych in 1962.

By the end of the 1960s, he had been widely recognized by Western art circles. He had the leading galleries including Galerie de France and Kootz Gallery as his middleman and successively held exhibitions in the Folkon Museum in Germany, and National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, Canada. His reputation increased rapidly and internationally. However, at the time of his success, the sudden death of his wife May Zao stroke him. He suffered from the loss and powerless feeling, which resulted in his home visit, returning to China to visit his mother, whom he had not seen in 24 years. During this journey back to China, the meeting with famous Chinese landscape painters encouraged him to pick up the Chinese brush again. His art was reborn in the nourishment of his homeland. He returned to the peak of creation in 1975 and re-expanded the form of polyptychs and entered a key turning point in the next year, embracing his “hurricane stage”. In this auction, we are honored to present his unique and meaningful “first diptych” of the period, 23.09.76.

Throughout Zao's whole life's creations, there are less than 50 multi-panel oil paintings, only 35 of which are triptychs. Compared with the triptychs, diptychs are even rarer, with only 13 ever showed. In the form of a diptych, the left and right paintings can be separated and become independent. When they are connected, they become one unified new composition. Through the contrast between the two presentation form or the connection of them, the flow of time sequence appears, just like two connected notes that can be added and multiplied to form a strong tone in the universe. Zao starts from the diptych form, fulfilling his thoughts on the complementarity of imagery and spatial pattern. As the representative and earliest of the initial series, 23.09.76 has irreplaceable rareness and naturally born importance!

At the Edge of Sky, the Philosophy in the Perpetuality of Reality-Virtuality Movement

In 23.09.76, Zao makes full use of the “elastic” visual linkage of the diptych, so that the spatial relation would create a small universe with the reality and virtuality perpetually move and circulate in it. The left and right paintings are like yin and yang portrayals of the same scene, with similar composition but each with its own advantages. The main body of the paintings spread out in the form of “empty above, fulfilled below, converging towards the center”. The difference in details creates the dynamic circulation between the two joint paintings and the rich content in the confrontation between reality and virtuality. The left-hand side painting has diagonal composition, with overlapping of light colors. Artist carefully constructs a misty mood like white space left in the ink painting, and he also presents the core of the vortex more concentratedly; in contrast, we can see large pieces of brown color sweep across the bottom of the painting on the right, superimposing transparent black ink and blue-green color vertically. It stimulates the imagination of viewers with the spirit of nature, sometimes the rocky mountain, sometimes the running waves, sometimes a cluster of distant mountains. The original colors applied are diluted with a large amount of turpentine oil into the light coffee color, beige, and light yellow. The overlapping intermediate colors form a rich texture, creating a delicate interlacing and scheduling of movement and stillness, virtuality and reality, magnificence and subtlety in the space.

The Thunderous Waves Hit the shore, the Majestic Poetry in the Powerful Strokes

“I want to express a sense of movement, sometimes it is the sense of lingering, sometimes it is the sense of rushing. I want to use the contrast and multiple vibrations of the same color to make the canvas dance.”
——Zao Wou-Ki

In terms of Zao's pursuit of brushwork, 23.09.76 fully presents his more powerful and dynamic contour lines, and the rhythm he introduced from the “vivid charm” in the Six Methods proposed by Xie He.

The black ink lines in the center of the painting are intertwined with a rhythmic tremor brushwork. It seems that a dragon is sinking on the left side, while a giant bird is flapping its wings on the right side, both reminding people of the scene of a turbulent wave hitting the shore with a storm hovering. Although the work does not have any concrete references, it takes the viewers into a magnificent realm. Zao's work reminds people of Xia Gui's work The Pure Stream in the Mountain Faraway. In the masterpiece created in the Southern Song Dynasty, the spatial imagination formed by the mountains and clouds contains all the poetic understanding of the artist. In Zao's work, he brings in his understanding of the cursive script calligraphy style.

The thick brushes are vigorous, accumulating energy on the both sides. The brushstrokes surrounded are the slender and flexible thin lines, knitting and folding in the ups and downs. After 20 years of exercise in abstract painting, Zao found his freedom in the mastery of brushwork and could create the changing saturation effect of ink painting with oil paints. The galloping lines form a rich texture, and the colors swept inject layered light and shade. In this breathing space with a sense of life and movement, viewers can also realize the infinite momentum depicted by Su Shi in his Niannujiao: Nostalgia for Chibi, “Rocks pierce through the sky, Stormy waves hit the shore, Scattering thousands of piles of snow.”

Gift and Blessings to the Couple, Masterpiece Collected by the Best Friends

Coming with a precious friendship of the artist 23.09.76 is a gift from the artist to his friends, a couple. There is an inscription on the back of the painting, “Pour Eugenia et Joan De Muga Leur ami.” Joan De Muga is a well-known French gallerist and collector. Joan De Muga and his father Manuel de Muga founded the famous Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona. Besides, he inherited his father's art business and promoted it in New York, Los Angeles, Barcelona, and many other places. In the 1970s, he set up a printing factory in Ediciones Polígrafa founded by his father, providing many artists with etching, lithograph, woodcut, and other printmaking techniques. Zao Wou-Ki, Joan Miró, Francis Bacon, and more than 300 artists have published albums and printed prints by Ediciones Polígrafa.

In 1976, when this work was completed, Zao collaborated with Joan De Muga for the first time. In that year, the author of À La Gloire de L'image et Art Poétique by the French writer, Roger Caillois, invited Zao to select fifteen paintings as illustrations in the book. Since then, Ediciones Polígrafa had successively published a total of 27 prints and 5 albums for him. Zao specially painted this work as a gift to his friends. He ingeniously adapted the form of dual screens, as a metaphor for the couple's love, expressing his sincere blessings. This work has been collected by Mr. and Mrs. De Muga for 34 years and has been included in many representative albums. It was also published in an important solo exhibition held by Fuji TV Gallery in Tokyo in 1977. It is the perfect representative creation of Zao Wou-Ki.

Price estimate:
HKD: 6,500,000 - 8,500,000
USD: 835,000 - 1,092,000

Auction Result:
HKD: 6,850,000