This rare red oil painting by Zao Wou–ki was completed in his early period. The broad dimensions and refreshing atmosphere make it an invaluable and rare masterpiece. The French art critic Daniel Marchesseau selected this piece as one of the works exhibited in the retrospective “Zao Wou–ki 60 Ans de Peintures (1935–1998)” in China from 1998 to 1999. It was titled “La Mer perdue” in the exhibition catalogue with a Chinese translation meaning “The Lost Sea.” Five years later, the curator Daniel Abadie organized a grand retrospective exhibition of Zao Wou–ki at Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, and this painting was also selected. The description in the catalogue was printed with two titles: “La Mer perdue” or “La Terre rouge et la Mer jaune,” meaning “The Lost Sea” or “The Red Earth and the Yellow Sea.” Such poetic and artistic implications truly appeal to the imagination.

Both spaces in the universe, the sea and the earth, give birth to everything in nature. In the eyes of a poet or a painter, the sea suggests imagery of being expansive, mysterious, insecure, inclusive, and sustainable, while the earth symbolizes home, closeness, stability, trees and grass, mountains and rocks. The sea and the earth share a mutual dependency between the virtual and the real, yin and yang. Zao was skilled in employing Chinese contemplative perspective in combination with Western sacred and serene lighting to create a seemingly virtual and empty but actually abundant impressionistic painting. The formation of the universe, the connection between the virtual and the real, are different layers within people’s living spaces. The subject about the virtual and the real is a pivotal issue in abstract painting, echoing the creation of an artistic conception in Chinese ink painting. This is also Zao’s ultimate concern in abstract painting. Throughout his life, he had been devoted to create “a space of mutual emergence between the virtual and the real,” a wonderland full of imagination. He rendered balanced and harmonious aesthetics in his paintings, leaving the world beautiful artistic treasures.

For Zao, imagery of the sea, voyages, and leaving home imply a touch of sadness, a complex emotion and memory he was not so willing to recall. In the early 1950s’, images of the sea and sailboats appear in his figurative paintings many times. Instead of viewing them as his travel experiences in Europe, these images are more likely to be the projection of his inner feelings.

In the early spring of 1948, after 36 days of a long voyage at sea, Zao finally arrived in Marseille Port, France. The Chinese artist, who once feared the water and the sea, must have summoned the courage to overcome his fear, tiding over the ocean to a distant country with his lofty dream. Zao later wrote about this experience in his autobiography: “I have retained the feeling of great boredom about this trip. The passage seemed the same every day. I have never had a great passion for the sea, and it has long been synonymous with me of the invasion of China by foreigners, from which it had to defend itself. I'm not sensitive to this notion of infinity that Western poets have so often mentioned. I prefer the almost motionless surface of lakes, which conceals the mystery and gives rise to an infinite variety of colors.”

Zao was born into an affluent scholarly family in 1921 in Beijing and later moved to Nantong and Shanghai. The influence of his family’s academic tradition kindled his desire to paint. At the age of 14, under his family’s support, he entered Hangzhou National College of Art, an art school famous for its modern art education. There he received instruction from Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu, and Pan Tianshou, learning Western painting and Chinese traditional painting. With postcards and picture cards from the art journals of Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Modigliani, he eagerly absorbed knowledge, imitating the styles of these masters. However, he wanted to explore the truth in painting. Following the trajectory of modern Western art, he came to the art capital, Paris.

Zao rushed to the Louvre to enjoy those famous paintings in his first afternoon in Paris. In front of him was another kind of art different from Chinese painting. He marvelled at the works. However, he gradually discovered that the distance between Chinese painting and Western painting was not that far; they simply held different perspectives. During his first year in Paris, he spent most of his time in galleries and exhibitions. He wished to understand other people’s paintings and intentions before creating his work. He later made friends with many contemporary artists, poets, and critics, becoming close with the art circle in Paris and finding an opportunity to make a living by painting. The culture of freedom in Europe enabled him to search for career development comfortably. He chose to travel in Spain and Italy, broadening his horizons by what he saw and heard through travel.

Chinese literati have loved to travel grand rivers and majestic mountains since ancient times. They learned from nature and based their inspirations on spirituality, “laying hills and gullies upon their bosom,” which has set a model in literati painting. Zao favored the landscapes of southern Europe, feeling that the beautiful scenery around Italy’s mountain towns in Tuscany was comparable to the picturesque Southern Yangtze area in China. The classic architecture and church murals in southern Europe inspired his spatial layout in his paintings. He began to adopt line drawing and simple strokes to illustrate images in a symbolic and abstract sense, creating multiple senses of space with a fixed–point perspective or a scattered perspective. He observed and recorded what he had seen and heard during travel with delicate calligraphic lines. The colors scattered on the canvas reflected the mystery of these ancient towns.

When he first saw the paintings of Paul Klee at a gallery in Switzerland in 1951, he was completely fascinated by the liberal, light, and poetic realm composed in the painting. Due to its space construction, a small canvas became so expansive that small symbols in multiple spaces can build another world. Klee’s art was influenced by Eastern culture and under Klee’s inspiration Zao found a shortcut toward another style. In the following two years, he created many small paintings with elements of static objects, flowers, ships, landscapes, and animals. He studied their combination and layout, building a kind of poetic space. Since he was influenced by the works of Klee, this short–term transitional phase was called “the Klee period.”

Without a doubt, out of “La Mer perdue” was a rare large creation of Zao during “the Klee period.” With a multi–point perspective employed in Eastern painting space and delicate brush stokes as well as classic and elegant Western colors, he composed a mirage–like poetic world. The sea and the land are inseparable, leaving people unlimited imaginative space. Following the direction of the painter, viewers seem to be traveling within. From the rolling hills to the woods on the left, viewers can see a space appearing to be clouds or the sea. Dots of sailboats in the right suggests a busy harbor, while in the foreground there seem to be people and animals chasing and dancing or a bustling scene of hunting and a harvest celebration. Regarding to Zao’s style during the early 1950s’, art critic Daniel Marchesseau says: “He refound a way for his brush, between delicate orientalism and classic architecture.” The embroidery–like line structure constitutes the unique style of his paintings. This stage is of key significance for his later transition to expressive and abstract painting style.

Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who once lived next to Zao, and the poet Henri Michaux both praised his figurative and impressionistic paintings created in the early 1950s’. Vivid and mysterious symbols in Zao’s works during his figurative Klee–influenced period formed into a crucial link to his later abstract oracle period. Titled “La Mer perdue,” this masterpiece represents his feelings away from home and his hesitation toward the unknown. Invaluably, although the artist had a sensitive and delicate heart, his optimistic personality allowed him to create a work filled with bright and positive images. When viewers were immersed in a pleasant visual enjoyment, the artist was also walking toward the broad road of abstract painting.