WattsOS
0
01.04.97
1997 · Oil on canvas
44 7/8 × 57 1/2 in. (114 × 146 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Zao Wou-Ki
?–2013
WA-00016904
DrawingFiguration
Representation
None documented
1
Institutional Exhibitions
32
Works in Collection
59
Assets Indexed
7
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
90%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Authority Records (2)
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
Prints from Europe and Japan; Etchings by Matisse
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1955
Field Verification (7 fields)
0 cross-verified · 7 single-source
- BiographyWikidata· 70%
- Birth yearWikidata· 70%
- Death yearWikidata· 70%
- LocationWikidata· 70%
- NationalityWikidata· 70%
- Primary mediumWikidata· 70%
- Profile imageWikidata· 70%
Source Registry (3)
- SothebysTier 3 · Scraped/inferred100%
- MoMA bulk 2026-05-04Tier 1 · Institutional92%
- WikidataTier 1 · Institutional40%
About
Why this artist matters now
Zao Wou-Ki was a Chinese-French painter and draughtsman who developed a lyrical abstraction bridging Eastern calligraphy and Western modernism. Born in Shanghai in 1920, he moved to Paris in 1948, where his practice synthesized gestural mark-making with controlled spatial composition. His drawings and paintings employ a restrained palette of blacks, greys, and earth tones, layering delicate lines and washes that suggest landscape and figuration without representing them directly. He worked across paper and canvas until his death in 2013.
Source: Sothebys · Trust score: 100% · Updated 1mo ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Figuration
Medium
Drawing
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (32)
View all 32 artworks →
Artwork sources (3)
32 published of 57 catalogued · 14 with image
- MoMA25 publishedof 50 catalogued14 img
- Cleveland Museum of Art4 published
- The Met3 published
Per-Artwork Provenance Chains (top 4)
4 entries · 1 sources
- 1952 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
- 1967 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
- 1963 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
- 1945 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
Record
Images
Relationships
4Movements1
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In collection
Cleveland Museum of Art
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
Record