Zao Wou-Ki was lauded throughout his career for his ability to unite multiple artistic traditions within a single work, marrying Eastern and Western approaches to art-making through his abstract compositions that retained hints of his training as a landscape painter. Zao was born in Peking (Beijing) in 1920 and began to study at National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou at the age of 15. In 1948, the artist moved to Paris, where he would live for the rest of his life, and soon began to exhibit internationally. Zao worked predominantly in oils, watercolor, and ink, but also experimented with engraving and lithography. While formally trained in traditional Chinese techniques, Zao’s early encounters with the work of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Cézanne, as well as his friendship with Henri Michaux, greatly influenced and expanded his creative endeavors. Zao was a member of the esteemed Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2006, French President Jacques Chirac bestowed the artist with France’s highest civil rank, the Legion of Honor. During his lifetime, Zao was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions in North America and Europe, including the Musée d’art contemporain in Montréal in 1969, the Grand Palais in Paris in 1981, the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 1996, and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2003. Since his death in 2013, the artist’s oeuvre has been celebrated with retrospectives at the Asia Society, New York (2016–17), and the Musée d’art moderne de las Ville de Paris (2018–19). Zao’s work may be found in museum collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate Modern, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, among others.