Rating and value of paintings, drawings and watercolors by Zao Wou Ki

If you own a work by or after Zao Wu Ki, and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers will offer you their appraisal services.

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Rating and value of the artist Zao Wu Ki

The artist Zao Wu Ki leaves behind a distinctive body of work, composed mainly of drawings and paintings. He is Franco-Chinese. Now, prices for his works are rising under auctioneers' gavels.

The price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €10 to €49,518,000, a significant gap but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to Zao Wu Ki's works.

He is prized above all by buyers from Hong Kong, Vietnam and France. In 2018, an oil on canvas entitled June - October 1985 sold for €49,518,900, a world record to date for the artist. His stock has exploded in recent years.

Order of value from a single work to the most prestigious

Style and technique of artist Zao Wu Ki    

Zao Wou-Ki paints without borders. He mixes ink and oil, calligraphy and abstraction, East and West. He doesn't seek to represent, he wants to suggest.

His canvases are spaces, landscapes without horizon lines, bursts of light and movement. He plays with color, layering it transparently, making it vibrate. He scratches, scrapes, erases, only to start again.

He lets water and ink spread freely over the paper, creating accidents that he transforms into living matter. 

He wants to capture energy, breath, that which doesn't freeze. Nothing is frozen, everything is in tension. He conjures up invisible depths, splinters that seem to float between heaven and earth. His paintings tell nothing, they evoke.

A storm rumbling, a wind blowing, a light escaping. He plays with emptiness, animating it, making it breathe. 

He paints as one composes music, with rhythms, silences, bursts. Each gesture is a pulse, each color a note.

He is inspired by calligraphy, the breath of the brush on paper, but he doesn't lock himself into it. He seeks a language that escapes words, a writing that speaks to the invisible.

The life of Zao Wu Ki  

Zao Wu Ki is a painter born in 1920 in Beijing, into a very old Chinese family, cultivated and initiated in art. He is a great admirer of Mi Fu, master of silk painting.

He works on the calligraphy of his mother tongue, which he considers an art in its own right. He entered the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts, where he studied drawing, traditional Chinese painting and oil painting.

He held his first exhibition in 1941, when his father bought him his first canvas. Needing other sources of inspiration, he turned to twentieth-century French painting.

After exhibiting in Shanghai, Zao Wu Ki moved to Paris with his wife. They lived in the Montparnasse district, at the height of cultural and artistic emulation at the time.

He met the Giacometti, and takes classes from Othon Friesz at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

He says he found his true personality in Paris, where he hung out with artists from various currents : Pierre Soulages, Nicolas de Stael, Hans Hartung or Jean-Paul Riopelle.

He discovered Paul Klee and saw him as a mediator in twentieth-century painting.

This marked the start of an international career, as Zao Wu Ki worked on his style and entered the world of lyrical abstraction, a movement that also included Olivier Debré in France.

He exhibited on almost every continent and was enormously successful.

He received numerous distinctions and died in Switzerland in 2013, aged 93.

Focus on 29.09.64, Zao Wou-Ki, 1964

Zao Wou-Ki conceives 29.09.64 as a storm in suspension. Nothing is fixed, everything is in motion. Bursts of light emerge from a chaos of deep browns, ochre and white.

The gaze glides, seeking an anchor point, but there is none. Space is open, infinite. It's not a landscape, but a vibration, an expanding breath.  

It doesn't trace, it breathes. Shapes dissipate, recompose, like a breath held then released. Ink and oil mingle, superimposed in transparency. He scratches, he scrapes, he erases to better reveal.

The void is not absence, it is tension, breathing. He plays with contrasts, letting color dilute, evaporate, then bringing it back in incisive bursts. Everything is balance and imbalance, erasure and appearance. 

You think you see a landscape, an explosion, a distant horizon, but everything escapes interpretation.

Energy circulates, light pulses. The space vibrates, as if traversed by an ancient breath, a silent force. Nothing is fixed, everything is a passage. The work is a suspended moment between collapse and birth, erasure and revelation.

Zao Wu Ki's imprint on his period

Zao Wou-Ki challenges boundaries. He doesn't choose between East and West, he puts them in dialogue. He moves away from figuration, emancipates himself from frameworks, and seeks a new way of writing. He doesn't want to illustrate, he wants to suggest.

His canvases don't tell a story, they vibrate. He captures the invisible, the impalpable, creating a space where light and matter merge. He paints silence, expectation, suspended movement. 

He influenced a generation of artists, inspiring those who refused labels. He has been likened to lyrical abstraction, but belongs to no movement. He crosses eras without locking himself into them.

He exhibits everywhere, is looked at, sought after, collected. His art speaks every language, reaching beyond borders. He seeks a painting without limits, a free space where color becomes breath, where emptiness dialogues with fullness. 

His gesture sets an example, his language becomes a reference. His large-scale compositions resonate like inner landscapes, invisible territories where the eye loses itself. He paints light, matter, energy.

He leaves a silent but profound imprint, an art where time, light and space intertwine in an uninterrupted breath.

His works are exhibited in the greatest museums, crossing the decades without losing their force. He has invented a world, and offered it to the eye.

Today, the artist stands out on the international auction scene, and his works have reached record sums in recent years.

Zao Wou-Ki's place within lyrical abstraction

Zao Wou-Ki is part of lyrical abstraction, but he doesn't confine himself to it. He's not looking for the raw gesture; he wants a painting that breathes, that stretches out in time and space. He doesn't compose, he lets it happen.

Color floats, unfurls, evaporates. He works in transparency, superimposing layers, creating vibrations. He wants to capture the moment, the energy of a breath, the light that crosses the canvas.

He joins Mathieu, Hartung, Soulages, but keeps his own way. His abstraction is not a rupture, it's a continuity, a dialogue between Chinese tradition and Western élan. He does not reject calligraphy, but absorbs it, transforming it into pure movement.

He wants a free painting, freed from the subject, a painting that evokes without naming. He seeks space, infinity, resonance. 

He leaves a unique imprint, an abstraction that doesn't scream, but vibrates. He doesn't want to freeze form, he wants it to escape, to breathe. He makes the canvas a moving territory, a place of echoes and silence. His art crosses time, elusive, always in suspense.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Zao Wu Ki his works most of the time, in French and Chinese, and marks his watercolors with a seal. However, it is essential to have your work appraised to be sure of its originality. What's more ; copies do exist.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by or after Zao Wu Ki, don't hesitate to request a free appraisal using our form on our website.

A member of our team of experts and licensed auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the market value of your work, not forgetting to send you ad hoc information about it.

If you wish to sell your work, you will also be accompanied by our specialists in order to benefit from alternatives for selling it at the best possible price, taking into account market inclinations.