Exhibition: in Deauville, Zao Wou-Ki, beauty in all things

Zao Wou-Ki opened in style the rich season of “Normandie Impressionniste 2024” which celebrates the 150 years of Impressionism, from March 22 to September 22. From March 2, this painter of breath and harmony (1920-2013) anticipated the Franciscans of Deauville with the celebrations which will convene them all at the end of May in this landscape of meanders, meadows and clear beaches. From “Whistler, the butterfly effect” at the Rouen Museum of Fine Arts, to Laurent Grasso at Jumièges Abbey. From Laurent Millet at the Rouen Normandy Photographic Center (“Former l’Hypochée”) to Bob Wilson in Rouen Cathedral (“Star and stone: a kind of love… some say. Cathédrale de Lumière” with Isabelle Huppert and Maya Angelou) . Zao Wou-Ki, a man of silence and a smile, precedes them all with his peaceful world, with his happiness in painting which radiates and imposes itself gently, contagious like joy.

This artist, born Chinese in 1920 in Beijing, naturalized French in 1964, died in Switzerland at the age of 93 in 2013, created a bridge of arts between East and West. His work continues to surprise with its original, controlled and fresh nature, after the large formats of “Zao Wou-Ki. Space is silence” seen at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in winter 2018, and the abundance of his work in “Zao Wou-Ki. It never gets dark” deployed at the Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence in spring 2021. Zao Wou-Ki, like any artist, goes beyond the point each time.

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From his large impressionist paintings to his inks which refer to Chinese calligraphy, from his art books anchored in poetry to the steles and porcelain vases which place the abstraction of his touch in an imperial position, he brings beauty, peace and meditation to a mute audience who succumbs to his charm. “Zao Wou-Ki, the alleys of another world” is a stroll in the fresh, spicy sea air. “Zao Wou-Ki’s paintings – this is well known – have a virtue: they are beneficial”, said the painter and poet Henri Michaux. “He is my friend because his painting first, his presence later, made me happy,” added Claude Roy, Goncourt of poetry in 1985. These quotes punctuate the Deauville exhibition.

Les Franciscaines, which has already welcomed 500,000 visitors since its opening in May 2021, took advantage of its white architecture for Zao Wou-Ki with a free scenography, without a unilateral tour circuit. And it is under the well of natural light in the central foyer that his treasure has been placed, the Hommage à Claude Monet, a vast triptych from 1991 (194 x 483 cm) which refers to the Impressionist painter's Water Lilies and which invites the viewer in a play of bluish shadows and clouds of pigments. “Everything seems to be the result of a single gesture and yet each square centimeter is worked like a miniature,” underlines Annie Madet-Vache, director of the museum. “I paint my own life but I also seek to paint an invisible space, that of dreams, a place where we always feel in harmony, even in agitated forms of contrary forces,” said the artist in 1988. in Self-portrait. This cornerstone-shaped book was written with Françoise Marquet, curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris who would become his third wife and, today, the stronghold that protects and promotes his work from her home on the shores of Lake Geneva . Hommage à Françoise, a triptych from 2003 in soft, victorious red, is a great blast of sunshine, a flamboyant twilight or an eternal field of poppies.

It is as an intimate and erudite person that Gilles Chazal, honorary director of the Petit Palais and professor at the École du Louvre, composed this exhibition which is as beautiful as it is educational. The work of the curator is to give back to Zao Wou-Ki all the breath that animates his painting, from large oils to inks and watercolors which translate harmony with nature (Untitled, Gaudigny, 2006), like a pink glow of spring. But also his work with the Sèvres and Bernardaud manufactories (sumptuous Hommage à Li Po - La Lune et l'Ombre, 2008, enamel on porcelain made from the original painted in 2005), with the Gobelins manufactory (Tapisserie Composition 1982, Lice tapestry, 2008). “Paint, paint, the only thing I know how to do in the world, which obsesses me and still prevents me from sleeping, as long as what I started is not finished,” he says in his Self-portrait. Commissioned by the architect Roger Taillibert in 1979, the nine panels made in watercolor, arranged in an accordion, for the college of La Seyne-sur-Mer, restored, are exhibited here (each panel measures 100 x 180 cm). This uninterrupted series of pale blues and soft browns dates from 1981. It seems to spring from the dawn of time.

“Zao Wou-ki, The aisles of another world”, until May 26 at the Franciscaines of Deauville (Calvados). Catalog (25 €).