Hong Kong’s M+ museum to show over 200 works by Zao Wou-Ki from December

More than 200 works by Chinese-French master Zao Wou-Ki, one of the greatest abstract artists of the mid- to late-20th century, will be shown at Hong Kong’s M+ museum later this year.

The venue on Thursday said it was planning Asia’s first major retrospective of Zao’s graphic works with an exhibition tentatively titled “Zao Wou-Ki: Graphic Works”. It will showcase pieces including Lecture by Henri Michaux (1950), Piazza Siena (1951) and In Honour of the Picture and of Poetry (1976), from December 13 onwards.

M+, a visual art museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District, will showcase for the first time more than 200 pieces donated by Zao’s family in 2022 and last year. It has the largest collection of Zao’s works outside France.

“The exhibition offers new insights into his artistic prowess and highlights his ability to bridge Chinese aesthetic heritage with European artistic mediums,” M+ director Suhanya Raffel said.

Zao’s wife, Françoise Marquet-Zao, chief curator and president of the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation, said the exhibition would inspire audiences to explore his extraordinary life, career and printmaking.

‘This exhibition is a tribute to my husband Zao Wou-Ki’s lifelong dedication to art,” she said.