7 things to know about famed Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki before you visit the M+ exhibition

In 1948, Zao left China with his first wife, French-Chinese multidisciplinary artist Xie Jing-Lan, known as Lalan, and settled in Paris. They arrived just as the city was reawakening after the Second World War. His first afternoon was spent at the Louvre, standing before the works of Picasso, Matisse and Paul Klee—artists who would shape his visual vocabulary. Within months, he was part of the Parisian avant-garde and joined the renowned printmaking studio Atelier Lacourière-Frélaut, where he learned etching and lithography. The technical possibilities of printmaking fascinated him. The process allowed him to achieve effects reminiscent of Chinese ink washes and to experiment freely with texture, layering and colour.

For Zao, printmaking was far more than a craft; it was a collaborative and exploratory medium that allowed him to merge technical precision with emotional spontaneity. He relished working closely with master printers and poets, exchanging ideas and translating his paintings into tactile impressions. His collaboration with the Belgian-born poet Henri Michaux was particularly meaningful. Moved by Zao’s prints, Michaux responded with a set of poems, which they published together. This partnership not only began a lifelong friendship but also revealed how Zao viewed printmaking as a dialogue between image and text—an intersection of visual rhythm and poetic movement.

Prints appealed to Zao because they could express the essence of brush and ink while embracing the boldness of Western abstraction. They were, as the M+ exhibition demonstrates, a meeting point between cultures and philosophies.

Throughout his long career, Zao never stopped experimenting. His early works featured still lifes, landscapes and human figures, all marked by a delicate balance between structure and emotion. In the 1950s, after encountering Paul Klee’s paintings in Switzerland, Zao began incorporating calligraphic signs and ancient Chinese symbols into his compositions. This marked a turning point: rather than depicting recognisable forms, he focused on energy, gesture and the spiritual essence of nature.

By the late 1950s, his art became fully abstract. He abandoned descriptive titles in favour of a universal visual language that could evoke the movement of wind, the flow of water and the rhythm of breathing itself. His development reflected not only artistic evolution but also a profound philosophical journey—one that sought harmony between control and freedom, tradition and innovation.

From 1958 onwards, Zao stopped giving his works descriptive names. Instead, many are marked simply as Untitled. This decision was intentional. Freed from the constraints of narrative, Zao wanted his paintings to draw inspiration from natural elements such as the wind, and to exist as pure expressions of mood and energy, allowing viewers to engage with them on a sensory level rather than a literal one.

He was deeply influenced by both Taoist thought and the aesthetics of Chinese ink painting, where empty space, known as liubai (“retaining blankness” in Mandarin), carries as much significance as form. In his abstract canvases, the void is not emptiness but a potential a space where creation begins. This philosophy made his work deeply meditative, resonating with Eastern spirituality while speaking to Western modernist concerns about the unseen and the infinite.

Zao’s life, like his paintings, was filled with movement between continents and emotional transformations. In the early 1970s, after the death of his second wife, the Hong Kong actor May Zao, the artist returned to ink painting, a practice he had largely set aside since moving to Paris. Encouraged by friends, he found solace in the simplicity and fluidity of ink, rediscovering his connection with Chinese artistic traditions. His return to China after three decades reaffirmed that bond, and the landscapes he saw on that journey inspired some of his most poetic later works.

His prints and paintings from this period display an extraordinary sense of calm, filled with light and space. They also demonstrate how his practice bridged continents not only visually but emotionally, weaving Western abstraction with the contemplative spirit of Chinese painting.

In the last decades of his life, Zao was a towering figure in both European and Asian art circles. He continued to collaborate with poets, publishers and other artists, exploring the deep relationship between image and text. Even after he stopped producing prints himself in 2000 due to age and health concerns, he worked closely with printers to translate his watercolours and ink paintings into new editions.

Zao passed away in 2013, but his influence remains far-reaching. His works now sit in the collections of the world’s leading museums, and his synthesis of East and West continues to act as a powerful model for contemporary artists navigating cultural heritage in a globalised age. During his lifetime, he also gave lectures to artists of the next generation, including Xu Jiang and Liang Quan, whose works are now collected by M+.

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