With a month before Christie's new Asia Pacific Headquarters at The Henderson building in Hong Kong opens, the international auction house has revealed the leading headliner of its inaugural sales: blue-chip artist Zao Wou-ki's rare and epic 05.06.80 – Triptyque.
The masterpiece, measuring 195 x 390 cm, is one of only twenty large-scale triptychs the Chinese-French artist ever created in his artistic career, and it was made especially for his first major French solo show at the Grand Palais in 1981.
Having remained in the same family collection for nearly four decades, the work will make its auction debut in the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale on 26 September with an estimate between HK$78 and 128 million (US$10 - 15 million).
Christie's new Asia Pacific Headquarters is located at The Henderson in Hong Kong, a newly designed building by Zaha Hadid Architects
Zao Wou-ki (Zhao Wuji, 1920-2013) | 05.06.80 – Triptyque, Oil on canvas (triptych)
Painted in 1980
Each: 195 x 130 cm | Overall: 195 x 390 cm
Estimate: HK$78,000,000 - 128,000,000 (US$10 - 15 million)
Auction House: Christie's Hong Kong
Sale: 20th/21st Century Evening Sale
Date: 26 September 2024
Address: 6/F, The Henderson, 2 Murray Road, Central
One of the most important artists in the Asian art market, Zao Wou-ki is one of the very few Chinese painters to have established international recognition during his lifetime, with demand for his works in Europe and the U.S. stretching back to the 1950s – a few years after he left his homeland for Paris. Institutional interest in him, too, has remained high: he was regularly invited to hold exhibitions around the world, and many of his works now grace museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou, and Tate Modern in London.
Back in the 1980s, when he was in his 60s and reached new heights in his career, Zao painted twelve large-scale triptychs for different occasions. Of these, only three have ever hit the auction block, including the 10-meter triptych that remains the artist's auction record to this day – Juin-Octobre 1985, which sold for HK$510 million (US$65 million) at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2018.
The sales of the other three triptychs:
- Juin-Octobre 1985 | 280 x 1000 cm | Sold: HK$510,371,000, Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2018
- Triptyque 1987-1988 | 200 x 486 cm | Sold: HK$178,000,000 (US$22.7 million), Christie's Hong Kong, 2019
- 15.01.82 | 195 x 390 cm | Sold: HK$94,600,000 (US$12.1 million), Christie's Hong Kong, 2020
Zao Wou-ki | Juin-Octobre 1985 | 280 x 1000 cm | Sold: HK$510,371,000, Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2018
Zao Wou-ki | Triptyque 1987-1988 | 200 x 486 cm | Sold: HK$178,000,000, Christie's Hong Kong, 2019
Zao Wou-ki | 15.01.82 | 195 x 390 cm | Sold: HK$94,600,000, Christie's Hong Kong, 2020
Zao Wou-ki
A trailblazer in the merging of Eastern heritage with American and European modernism, Zao was a restless artist, who, throughout his sixty-year career, continued to strive and broke through the boundaries of his previous limits. Passing through figuration and works inspired by ancient oracle bone scripts, in the 1960s his style entered what is referred to as the Hurricane Period – his Golden Age and arguably his most widely recognized period.
During this stage, he approached large-scale canvases wielding his bold ambition, as though they were an oppositional force he was battling against, and he was to fill the surface with a burst of explosive energy: wild, vigorous cursive lines and colors overtaking space towards a central axis.
This formidable energy of domination, however, came to an abrupt halt in 1972 when his second wife, May Zao, passed away. Distraught by his loved one's death, he had a hard time painting and visited China for the first time in over two decades. Having once rejected ink painting for its restrained traditionalism, he found himself drawn back to his cultural roots, inspired by its magnificent landscape and the Taoist belief that everything things in the universe is one.
Nourished by his artistic encounters in both the East and West, from the 1970s on Zao's style reached the Infinite Period; he became what his name embodies, Wou-ki – the artist with "no limits".
Zao Wou-ki | 29.09.64. (from the Hurricane Period) | 230 x 345 cm | Sold: HK$278,000,000 (US$35.5 million), Christie's Hong Kong, 2022 (The most expensive single-panel painting by the artist)
The left panel of 05.06.80 – Triptyque
The central panel of 05.06.80 – Triptyque
The right panel of 05.06.80 – Triptyque
With a fundamental shift in ideology, from "man conquering nature" to a belief in the oneness of nature and humans, Zao's works became less focused on line and gesture, instead channeling an otherworldly atmosphere dominated by light and space. The formerly explosive energy had matured into an existential quest for a more profound, nuanced inner landscape – the same kind that Chinese literati painters had extolled through the ages.
As manifested in 05.06.80 – Triptyque, the visual weight of his paintings is no longer distributed along a vertical or horizontal dividing line, but dispersed across the expansive canvas with the use of traditional Chinese painting's scattered perspective. Standing in front of the painting, the viewer’s gaze is allowed to roam freely across the canvas, which seemingly continues without end, with flowing light driving the changes and shifts in color, representing the boundless, infinite, ever-flourishing universe.
His brushwork, which uniquely blends Western oils and traditional Chinese ink painting techniques, is likewise dynamic, effortlessly dancing and adapting to achieve an even more prodigious aura of freedom and ease.
05.06.80 – Triptyque
05.06.80 – Triptyque was created for the artist's first major French solo show at the Grand Palais, Paris in 1981 – a show that paid tribute at the highest institutional level to Zao's 30-year achievement in the West and unveiled a new chapter of enlivening the artist's heritage in the East.
That exhibition subsequently toured five museums in Japan, before its display at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1982, and then as part of a solo exhibition held at the National Art Museum of China in 1983 – the first-ever exhibition Zao had in his homeland since his departure in 1948. Later, the work traveled to the artist's alma mater, the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he trained under the tutelage of the pioneering modern Chinese painter Lin Fengmian. It has remained in private hands since the 1980s.