Zao Wou-Ki and Sanyu
By Philippe Koutouzis

Zao Wou-Ki met Sanyu after arriving in Paris in 1948. He remembers a very animated character who’s eyes followed passing women while seated at a café terrace, but who also complained about not selling his paintings well

Browsing through the catalog of his work he remembers:

“ The nude for me was an exercise, all its expressive possibilities attract painters, it is a bit like a microcosm of the universe, but this was not my path”
“ In 1985 I taught in Hangzhou for some time, the students and the models were prudish, I taught them to let the sheet which covered the body fall, and to study the curves of the back of a nude”
“ Sanyu should have taught in China, he was extremely bold and followed his impulses”
“For me painting was at first an apprenticeship, then a search for a voice and since then, every day, I solve the problems that each painting presents”
“ Sanyu painted what fascinated him, the female body. It is perhaps afterwards, when his life became more difficult, that he painted other things”
“ These large brush strokes, these broad black contours enhance his desire for voluptuous forms. He shows everything with the brushstrokes and the contrast of colors, his most beautiful works are the barest ones”

At first glance, nothing appears further away from the art of Sanyu than this Blue Nude painted by Zao Wou-Ki in 1950.

The style of this small icon with its face like a moon, shy, light and nuanced appears like a symbol of feminity. While Sanyu is translating the hedonism of a moment, Zao Wou-Ki is already on the path that nature inspires in him. Zao Wou-Ki and Sanyu complement and fulfill each other by satisfying the essential desire of humanity to deify itself in its own image and perpetuate itself through symbols.