Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1993

CITATIONS M r . Zao Wo u - ki Ever since the time of Montesquieu when, according to Jonathan Spence, a young Chinese librarian worked in Paris for King Louis X I V , the French capital has been a kind of spiritual Mecca and haven to Chinese intellectuals and artists seeking stimulation, inspiration, or simply an alternative life style. Few, however, have gained the reputation and received the adulation accorded the emigre painter Zao Wou-ki. Zao's singular success is due less to theFrench predisposition towards artists than to his own outstanding qualities as an intellectual and painter. Zao Wou - ki was bom in 1921 into a scholar gentry family whose ancestry can be traced to emperors of the Song dynasty. The family had a rich and extensive collection of classical paintings through the ages and Zao's grandfather was an amateur painter of some repute who had won a painting competition in far off Panama. His father was a banker but did not discourage Zao junior' s ambition to attend art college instead of following education of amore traditional kind. Zao's uncle also encouraged his artistic inclination by bringing h im postcards of French paintings from Paris. His mother was not amused when young Wou-ki started to colour her seventeenth century porcelain collection with paints and inks, to try to improve them, or so he said. She was very relieved, therefore, when, at the age of 14, Zao Wou-ki enrolled in the National School of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. He could now paint on canvas and rice paper instead of on her precious ceramics. In Hangzhou, Zao Wou-ki took lessons in Chinese painting, calligraphy andWestern art. Just as the glistening sunlight on shimmering water in the South of France has been the inspiration of many French painters, so the gathering mist overhanging the ageless mountains around theWest Lake of Hangzhou has nurtured the creative genius of many Chinese artists, among them Zao Wou-ki. His first love was Western style oil-painting, not Chinese art which at the time seemed to h im strongly derivative and suffocatingly formal. His apprenticeship completed, the young Zao Wou - ki held his first exhibition in Chongqing in 1941. His father bought his first painting. It was just as well that he did, because Zao Wou - ki needed the money to pay for the rental of the exhibition hall. After that, Zao the young painter, now a professional, started teaching at the school from which he had graduated. 46th Congregation 12