No Limits: Zao Wou-Ki By Michelle Yun, Melissa Walt & Ankeney Weitz
4to. pp. 184. profusely illustrated. hardcover cloth. dw. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
New in publisher's shrink wrap.
ISBN-10: 0300220189 / ISBN-13: 9780300220186
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The Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) developed a distinctive abstract style blending the visual poetry of Chinese painting and calligraphy with European pictorial traditions. This stunning volume presents a richly woven narrative of the artist's life and work. Reintroducing Zao's work to a North American audience, the authors make a substantial contribution to scholarship on transnational art movements in the 20th and 21st centuries. Their essays consider the reception of Zao's work in the United States; his engagement with post-war abstraction; and his exploration of various artistic media. Zao Wou-Ki lived and worked at the intersection of two cultures. He blended Chinese calligraphic and ink painting aesthetics with European printmaking and abstract oil painting, becoming one of the earliest trans-cultural painters of the 20th century. His legacy reverberates in the global success of Chinese artists today.