M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is pleased to announce a significant donation of works of the Chinese French master Zao Wou-Ki (1920–2013), encompassing almost the totality of his career. The donation was presented by Zao’s wife Madame Françoise Marquet-Zao, a French curator and the president of Fondation Zao Wou-Ki.

The donation consists of more than 220 independent prints and proofs, more than two dozen illustrated books and folios, and associated materials that illustrate Zao’s prolific work in print and bookmaking. Notably, the donation covers Zao’s entire professional career.

With this generous contribution, Madame Marquet-Zao wishes to complete the chronological span of Zao’s oeuvre in the M+ Collections. Dominique de Villepin, former French prime minister, celebrated writer, and a longtime friend of Zao Wou-Ki and Madame Marquet-Zao, played an instrumental role in the realisation of the donation. This donation also builds upon the gift of Zao’s works to M+ in March 2022 by the artist’s daughter, Sin-May Roy Zao.

Zao Wou-Ki was one of the greatest abstract painters and modern masters from China. A fixture in mid- and late twentieth-century art, Zao achieved international success by integrating Chinese aesthetic heritage with European artistic mediums. His work is widely collected by museums in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Zao is best known for his dramatic studies in colour and light. This is a longtime fascination he had expressed in his printmaking, a medium to which he regularly returned throughout his illustrious career. Compared to his oil paintings, prints make more visible the calligraphic traces and layers of colour in his artistic process. Their colour and composition, flow of energy, interwoven details, and translucency affirm their unique status in the painter’s career.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, expresses her excitement about the donation, ‘M+ is immensely grateful to Françoise Marquet-Zao for generously donating such a large group of exceptional works by Zao Wou-Ki to our museum. As an artist who powerfully bridged cultures with the experimental language of abstraction, Zao is undoubtedly significant to M+’s mission to build an international museum of contemporary visual culture that threads global perspectives. Through this donation, M+ will be the only museum outside of France—and the only one in Asia—that has an almost complete catalogue of prints and illustrated books by the artist. This philanthropic gesture is the consummate celebration of Chinese-French relations and furthers the legacy of artistic and cultural exchange between the two countries. It is M+’s immense honour to have received these important artworks by Zao.’

Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial, and Chief Curator, M+, discusses the significance of Zao’s artistic legacy, ‘The power and lyricism of Zao Wou-Ki’s work make him a towering figure in twentieth-century abstraction. This donation will allow M+ to trace the evolution of Zao’s artistry across six decades and place him in conversation with fellow Chinese diasporic artists in the M+ Collections, such as Walasse Ting, Tseng Yuho, and long-time friend and architect I. M. Pei, who contributed to the discourse of twentieth-century modernism. M+ is proud to house such a rich repertoire of works by this modern visionary.’

Françoise Marquet-Zao elaborates on her donation, ‘I am pleased to gift this collection of marvellous works by my husband, Zao Wou-Ki, to M+. It is my mission to promote and pay homage to his life and work. Through this donation, I hope to enable the museum to represent the full range of techniques and materials that constitute his artistic career. I place my full trust in M+, a visionary public institution celebrating visual culture in Asia and its international resonances, to honour Zao Wou-Ki’s legacy and ensure his works are appreciated for many generations to come.’

About Zao Wou-Ki

Zao Wou-Ki (1920–2013) was one of the greatest abstract painters in mid- and late twentieth-century art. Immersed in Chinese painting and calligraphy in his youth, Zao graduated from the National College of Art in Hangzhou, where he learned from Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu, and other progressive artists who studied in Europe in the 1920s and brought back stylistic inspirations and new pedagogical methods. Upon graduation, Zao taught at his alma mater and participated in exhibitions in Shanghai and Chongqing with other avant-garde artists, including Lin, Wu, Ding Yanyong, Guan Liang, and Li Zhongsheng.

In 1948, Zao left China for Paris, where he lived for the majority of his life. There, he accomplished an extraordinary career and developed his signature lyrical abstraction, a forceful visual language combining the distinct genres of calligraphy and oil painting with the layered approach of printmaking. In the early 1970s, Zao made a trip to China that prompted him to return to the traditional ink-wash medium for the first time since his departure, which later became an important parallel to his oil paintings. He spent a substantial amount of time in China to realise projects, including two large-scale paintings commissioned by I. M. Pei for Fragrant Hill Hotel (1982) in Beijing. He also taught at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (succeeding the National College of Art, now the China Academy of Art), often accompanied by his third wife, curator Françoise Marquet, whom he married in 1977.

Zao’s work is widely collected by museums in Europe, North America, and Asia. In 1984, he was made an Officier de l’Ordre de la Legion d’Honneur. In 1994, he was awarded the Premium Imperial Award of Painting by the Japanese Emperor. He was elected to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 2002. He died in Switzerland in 2013.

About M+

M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, it is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. M+ is a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District

The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.