Zao Wou-ki is one of the world's best-known Chinese-born artists and an eminent proponent of abstract expressionism. Painting in oil, he creates visual panoramas that have all the sweeping grandeur and spontaneity of traditional splashed-ink landscapes. Active for more than seven decades, he was-and continues to be-one of the few Chinese painters to enjoy sustained critical acclaim and public popularity for dozens of years. What is more, many of his works are held in the collections of major museums and galleries around the world, further underlining the unique position Zao holds among his peers.

Devoting his entire life to painting, and never ceasing to experiment in his art, Zao created a number of precious masterpieces that bear witness to the greatness of the human spirit. Each of his different artistic periods produced a distinct style, keeping audiences on the edge of their seat as they followed his development. After 1980, the artist increasingly explored the possibilities of outsized formats, while thematically he continued to aim at a modern version of the mood and style of Chinese literati painting. By this time, Zao had already received many of the highest honors and acknowledgments, and been invited to teach at the Ecole National Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, as well as the China Academy of Art in Zhejiang (formerly Hangzhou National College of Art). He shared many of his creative insights with Chinese students, and here we quote one such example from his autobiography, aptly illustrating his artistic approach: "When you begin a new painting, ideally you should not start in the middle of the canvas, because that will make it almost impossible to determine the center's relationship to the rest of the composition. It is better to set out with an eye to the complete layout, the overall structure. Colors, too, can never be used on their own; every hue and shade is connected to all other tones. The fact is that every single brushstroke has far-reaching implications for the entire painting, and you should not apply a single fleck of paint without keeping in mind the organic whole that you are about to create." ("Lorsque vous commencez un tableau, il faut le commencer dans son ensemble car si vous dessinez d'abord le centre, la relation avec le reste sera impossible à trouver. Un couleur ne s'utilise pas seule, elle ne peut pas rester isolée car dès que le pinceau pose une touché c'est la surface entière qui bouge. Si vous touchez inci, il faut toucher les autres endroits. Il faut lier l'ensemble, en trouvant les bonnes variations, avec la plus grande simplicité.")

It was in the summer of 1981, after he had been active in the European art scene for more than thirty years, that Zao Wou-ki - at the invitation of the French government-first held a retrospective exhibition at the magnificent Grand Palais. The Grand Palais is a national historic building as well as a museum and exhibition hall in the heart of Paris, the tallest building of the city back when it was originally completed in 1900, and the site of many grand retrospectives of famous painters, including Cézanne, Monet, Rousseau, Picasso and Matisse. It was thus a sign of Zao's standing in the art community, as well as a high recognition of his artistic achievement, when his work was made the sole focus of an international retrospective on this kind of scale. Of course, the 1980s also saw new developments in the artist's style, as Zao gradually drifted towards a cleaner, simpler and more concise palette while exploring empty, quiet spaces and vast, churning vistas, constantly striving to express the ancient Chinese view of nature, which sees humanity as an integral part of a harmonious cosmos.

This lot, "5.2.81," is one of Zao's masterpieces from the 1980s. Executed with a dry brush and light strokes to bring out subtle variations of shade and texture, the composition presents a deliberately vague panorama, a mottled scenery that is pulsating with intimations of divine light searing silently yet decisively through mist and clouds. Talking about how in the 1970s he had suddenly felt the urge to return to the delights of traditional Chinese forms and techniques of visual art, such as ink-and-wash, calligraphy, or landscape painting, Zao once said, "My work is now about finding new, previously unseen spaces in the immense whiteness of the canvas: spaces I had not even thought of before." And: "The directness and irreversibility of ink and wash and splashed ink techniques allows me to create spaces that are pulsing with poesy." Drawing inspiration from his cultural roots, Zao adopted an even more instinctive and straightforward approach, marrying the specific texture and light of oil paint with the Chinese tradition of multi-perspective painting and liubai, thus generating spatial matrices that are both free-flowing and sublimely structured. Looking at his later paintings, one is confronted with the profound mysteries of emptiness and void. Reaching far beyond the boundaries of our everyday experience, the artist probes the very depths of the universe: yet his works are not heavy, but light, pure and glowing with an inner brightness.

But Zao's explorations in the world of abstractionism, while inspired by his early roots and influences, by no means marked a simple return to the conventions of Chinese painting. Rather, Zao gradually developed his very own brand of aesthetic appeal. Taking stock of Western notions of time and space, the artist proceeded to create a style of contemporary abstract painting that is both modern and an extension of the literati tradition. During the 1980s, then, Zao further upped the ante, reaching a level where his paintings reveal the "substantiality of the insubstantial." As Zao once put it, "I was touched directly by empty space and perfect silence, and this gave me the confidence to continue in my pursuit of unknown realms, and push the boundaries of my art." By the time he painted "5.2.81," Zao had already attained the pinnacle of his art. Like other works from this period, this lot is brimming with unrestrained refinement and spiritual freshness. Rich layers of expressive color are applied in a well-tempered palette, generating an almost mystical sense of luminosity and transparence that appears completely natural and spontaneous, and yet must be seen as the highest form of artistic expression. The rhythmic undulations that cascade across the canvas like impetuous waterfalls stir up the observer's imagination, leaving it to contemplate the countless possibilities suggested by a vision that presents infinity through the medium of a finely balanced, ingeniously abstracted landscape.