Events  17.06.26

Around sixty works by Zao Wou-Ki are entering the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon

Zao Wou-Ki’s works enter the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon thanks to a personal donation from his wife, Françoise Marquet-Zao, former curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and president of the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation.

This significant donation comprises 59 drawings, a sketchbook of sanguine drawings dating from around 1948-49, two watercolor sketchbooks from 1950 and an oil painting on canvas from 1983.

Untitled, 1949, Zao Wou-Ki, charcoal, 47 × 30 cm
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Photo Antoine Mercier

Untitled, c.1948-1949, Zao Wou-Ki, ink, 34 × 27.8 cm
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Photo Naomi Wenger

During the summer of 1950, Zao Wou-Ki left Paris for a few weeks for one of his first trips to Europe: he accompanied his friend, the painter Johnny Friedlaender, to the Savoy Alps. The landscape of Saint-Jeoire-en-Faucigny and the surrounding mountains are the subjects of these two sketchbooks of 25 and 29 watercolors, donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon. They bear witness to a creative process. The mountains would feature in some twenty of the artist’s canvases upon his return from this trip.

Untitled, 1950, Zao Wou-Ki, watercolour, 23.4 × 31.5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Photo Naomi Wenger

Untitled, 1950, watercolour, 26.8 × 21 cm
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Photo Naomi Wenger

03.02.83 completes this exceptional donation. This work, perfectly square in format (200 × 200 cm), reveals the importance of nature in Zao Wou-Ki’s work. The painter seeks less to represent the forms of nature than to grasp its rhythm. It was presented in the autumn of 1983 in Beijing and Hangzhou during Zao Wou-Ki’s first exhibition in China since his departure in 1948, and subsequently in major retrospective exhibitions of the artist.

03.02.83, 1983, Zao Wou-Ki, oil on canvas, 200 × 200 cm
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Photo Naomi Wenger

The signing of the notarial deed by the donor and the mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet, took place on Friday 22 May 2026.