Meditating with Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013)

At the age of 85, the man continues to paint tirelessly. Soon Alzheimer's disease will catch up with the artist, plunging him into his uncertain darkness but further freeing his creativity which takes refuge in vibrant colorful watercolors. The gesture of the Chinese artist – who became French after the Second World War – remains luminous here too, in this large and dense oil painting. Like an echo of the revelation of the Easter festival, that of an unexpected Light springing from the night of the tomb. This night, now impossible, is evoked here by the aging artist in the form of two large paintings which complement and face each other.

A large green “calligraphy” runs throughout, bringing together red, pink and yellow glows. As if this ancestral art of writing, skillfully drawn in black ink on large white papers, of which he is the heir, was overturned from the inside. The time is no longer for the scholarly restraint of elites who have mastered their art, but for the explosion of life. “The brush is used to bring things out of chaos,” explains Zao Wou-Ki. Painting then becomes a way of being in the world. “Paint, as best as possible, emptiness and fullness; the light and the dense; the living and breathing. » Sixty years after passing the entrance exam for the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts, by drawing a Greek statue from a cast, the artist no longer needs to pretend. For him too, the night, like the day, is light.