Oil on canvas

54 × 65 cm. 21 1/4 × 25 5/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and English on bottom right; titled and dated in Chinese, signed in English on the reverse

LITERATURE
2019, Zao Wou-Ki catalogue raisonné Vol.1 1935 – 1958, Groupe Flammarion / Foundation Zao Wou-Ki, Paris, p.165
RPOVENANCE
Galerie Pierre Loeb, Paris
1956, Collection of Larry Aldrich, New York
Galerie Redies, Duisbourg
1978, Collection of Roland Hänssel et Waltraut, Stuttgart
30 March 2017, Nagal Stuttgart, Roland Hänssel, Gründer der Manus Presse Collection, Lot 1102
Acquired directly by present important private Asian collector from the above

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

Note: Larry Adrich was a pioneer in the U.S. fashion industry and an art collector; Mr. and Mrs. Hänssel had established renowned publishing house Manus Presse in 1961

Boundless Universe Imbued with Eastern and Western Essence
Dreams of Paradise in Zao Wou-Ki's Deux Cimes

“Zao Wou-Ki Turns a New Page in History.”
——France Daily Mail June 24, 1951

During his lifetime Zao held over 100 solo exhibitions at venues around the world and his works have been collected by 132 art museums and important institutions, including the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in Spain and Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo, a resume unmatched by any other modern Asian artists. In September 2023, the China Art Academy Art Museum in Hangzhou, the Centre Pompidou and the Paris Museum of Modern Art will hold a six-month exhibition titled “Boundless Path: Centennial Retrospective of Zao Wou-Ki.” Other than celebrating “60 years of Sino-French Exchanges,” this cultural event also underscores the elevated artistic position and great esteem with which Zao Wou-Ki is still held.

Renowned Collectors, a Brilliant Artistic Classic

Zao first made a splash in the Western art world in 1950, at which time he had been in France for two years and gradually started to find his footing in Paris. Zao Wou-Ki's paintings were very much admired by Parisian gallery owner Pierre Loeb and on one occasion after visiting the artist's studio he bought 12 works, which marked the beginning of a cooperation that lasted seven years. For the autumn auction, we are honored to present Deux Cimes which was completed from 1952-1953 and can be traced back to Loeb's gallery. The painting showcases the classic creative features of Zao's work when he first made a name for himself and the unique ideas reflected therein.

Deux Cimes has a very clear provenance and was previously owned by renowned American fashion designer Larry Aldrich and Manus Presse founders Roland Hänssel and Waltraut Hänssel. Aldrich started to collect art when his fashion design business was booming in the 1940s and by the late 1950s his collection included works by impressionist and expressionist masters: such as Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Paul Klee, Paul Gauguin etc. as well as several paintings by Zao Wou-Ki. Deux Cimes, been part of the collection, underscores the fact that at that time Zao's paintings were favored by international art collectors. In 1961, Hänssel established Manus Presse dedicated to the publication of art related books and worked with many contemporary artists such as surrealists Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and landscape artist Christo. In 1978, Deux Cimes was bought and remained as a treasured part of their collection for almost 40 years, making the work a genuine rarity in auction.

From Simplicity to Complexity, Hand and Heart as One
Birth of True Self Painting Language and a World of Semiotics

“Semiotics live in the works of Zao Wou-Ki. He gradually cuts them from their shell, flesh and blood ... semiotics reveal the marks and imprints of roots from the very depths of the world, carry with them the teachings of his scholarly Chinese family and convey an understanding of the world as he takes strength from a mystical tradition. In China they created not words but semiotics and the footprints left by their creators map a path to the cosmos.”
——Former Premier of France Dominique de Villepin

Recollecting his first impression on arriving in France in 1948, Zao remembered finding everything in Paris fresh and appealing. He embraced a new culture, and every day visited museums to be close to works by artistic masters from the Renaissance and contemporary Western art. In that way, he observed the principles of Western painting and style and developed the courage to try new things and techniques. For example, in 1949 he studied printmaking at the studio of Desjobert and as Zao said of this time: “My painting style had not yet taken shape, everything was still in my head like a brewing storm.” In 1951, the artist made an important breakthrough in his creative work and his iconic personal style started to take shape. At that time, while visiting Switzerland Zao occasionally encountered the paintings of Paul Klee which and found them dazzling, commenting: Klee turns objects into semiotics, crafting a light and agile poetry and vast spatial sense in multiple spaces, in a way that makes clear his understanding of and love for Chinese painting. This discovery deeply surprised Zao Wou-Ki and led to an epiphany that caused him to reexamine his Eastern roots, from which he took aesthetic sustenance. From 1951 to 1953, Zao's paintings embraced the world of semiotics, while retaining semi-representational elements and guides, as a result of which he created a series of works that very much resonated with people and which many fell in love with. Sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who was a noted fan of Zao's works in this period, said: “There is something thrilling in the paintings, they are replete with life energy.” Deux Cimes was created against this backdrop.

Heaven, Earth, People as One with the Universe

As Zao Wou-Ki started to reexamine his Chinese identity, he extracted the aesthetic essence with which he identified and cherished from Chinese culture, masterfully transforming and expressing it through Western media. In this horizontal painting the artist chooses lush green associated with bronzeware and oracle bones from the Shang (1600-1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046-256 BCE) dynasties as the main colour tone. By marking the whole work with colour gradations and changes in the degree of lightness, he deliberately crafts a sense of history as from feeling of antiquity and distance associated with Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 9 AD, 25–220 AD) stone reliefs. This lush green is also the colour of nature and symbolizes “the origins of life.” Unlike Paysage de Montagne painted by Zao in 1948, in Deux Cimes he boldly moves away from overly detailed depictions of natural scenery, in favor of the Eastern preference for erudite aesthetics and “simplicity over complexity” – condensing the word into the scene presented to the viewer. The three-section composition is comprised of three spatial layers representing heaven, earth and people, showcasing nature and scenery in the most refined semiotic depiction, with the Western one-point perspective and Eastern multi-point perspective perfectly combined.

Zao Wou-Ki employs fine powerful lines like bronze engraving, and through changes in weight and speed ingeniously crafts a sense of three-dimensional scenery from two dimensional pictures. From top to bottom he depicts a vast sky, a round moon, mountains, green waves, the wind, an undulating river and a line of building structures that symbolize the crystallization of human civilization. At the far left there is what looks like two pagodas, which exquisitely echo the exterior of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Directly in front of this a straight, perspective-oriented road below the centre of the painting opens up in front of us, as if inviting the viewer into the world of the painting. In this presentation, the cosmos is condensed into three simple elements: sky, mountains and rivers, and buildings, with heaven, earth and people as one. This imparts to the viewer a powerful sense of harmony and inclusiveness reminiscent of the words of Zhuangzi: Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together. It also conveys the power of natural vastness and distance, listening carefully to the heart beat of nature

Zao's ability to present the breadth of the world and the vastness of the universe in the scene is both a boundless spiritual surprise and a comfort. Within this barely discernible night sky, next to the moon the artist adds several red brushstrokes as a finishing touch. This dramatic colour contrast with the background heightens the natural magical power of the red moon lighting up the world below. In so doing it also brings to mind the words of a new poem Joyful Moon: “Tonight all is quiet there is no wind, a red light hangs in the green sky, grand occasions take place around the world, but everyone stares at the moon”, or alternatively the words of Wang Wei (701-761) in An Autumn Evening in the Mountains: “The bright moon shines between the pines, the clear spring water flows over the stones.” Such sentiments make the viewer yearn to explore and wander but also reflect a profound respect for nature.

Reviving Aesthetics, Haziness and Poetry

“Zao Wou-Ki combines the radiance of calligraphy with a depth that is rich in atmosphere ... expressing the instinct toward three-dimensional space of a Chinese person. A Chinese artist never concerns himself with the exterior of an object but rather always observes things hidden behind the object and the haze-shrouded distant scenes that fill many traditional Chinese paintings invariably allude to a real world beyond the physical world we can see.”
——English art historian Michael Sullivan

If we look back at the childhood of Zao Wou-Ki, every Chinese New Year his banker father would display a painting he had collected by Mi Fu (1051-1107) for the family to appreciate and this influenced Zao in adulthood. In terms of the history of Chinese painting the artist particularly favored Song Dynasty paintings which he considered to be the peak of Chinese art and fell in love with works by Mi Fu and Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322). Against that backdrop, Zao takes the “blank space” aesthetic that is such an integral part of Chinese painting and calligraphy and transforms it in Deux Cimes into space that is dark, hazy and imbued with multiple rich layers of approximate colour changes. In this way, he uses coloured oils to construct a dreamlike space. Indeed, there is an interesting similarity between this piece and Mountains and Pines in Spring by Mi Fu. Although Zao does not directly depict objects, in the hazy night sky meteors are changed into coloured dots and plummet from top to bottom, the moonlight is lightly sprinkled on the mountain tops and the distant peaks are barely lit so the viewer can imagine grass fluttering in the wind, trickling streams, shimmering light in the water, floating clouds and a brightly coloured life on the mountains and land in the distance. Moreover, the Western style building juxtaposed to nature illuminates the miracle of human civilization, eulogizing the joy, hope and yearning of modern people.

Zao Wou-Ki named the work Deux Cimes and this symbolizes not only the image of mountain tops, but also reveals the sources of inspiration for his artistic work -- China and France, which he embraces as two sources of culture. In 1948, Zao traveled from China to France and in 1951 he looked back from his home in the West and in doing so rediscovered and came to better understand and affirm the unique aesthetics of the East. The strengths of East and West nourished Zao Wou-Ki and by making full use of both in his art he breathed new life into painting

Price estimate:
HKD 8,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 1,025,600 – 1,923,100