After the musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch in Issoudun in 2015, the musée Cernuschi in 2016 and the musée d’Art moderne de Paris in 2019 and 2023 (see QDA of 13 April 2023), it is now the turn of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon to receive from Françoise Marquet-Zao, former curator at the musée d’Art moderne de Paris and wife of Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013), a donation of works by the Franco-Chinese artist. This consists of 59 drawings, two watercolour sketchbooks, a red chalk sketch book from the late 1940s and an abstract painting from 1983, 03.02.83.

Valued at more than four million euros, the ensemble spans different periods, illustrating Zao Wou-Ki’s creative reinvention. The sketch book gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon thus bears witness to the artist’s early years in France: highly influenced by Matisse at the time, he filled his sketchbooks with portraits and nudes drawn from life at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Several sheets from the donation draw a parallel with Matisse’s Themes and variations drawings, of which the museum holds a series from 1942.

Two watercolour sketchbooks, this time inspired by nature and Paul Klee, trace the artist’s European wanderings, in particular his alpine stay in Saint-Jeoire-en-Faucigny in the summer of 1950.

With its nebulous forms placed at the bottom of the canvas, 03.02.83 reflects the years during which Zao Wou-Ki, following a return to his native country in the 1970s, took up Chinese ink once again and renewed his approach to abstraction, which he explored on large formats. The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon will present the Marquet-Zao donation in autumn 2027, when it will join a new hang of the institution’s 20^th and 21^st-century collections.