Georges Mathieu

Grandeur déçue

The early encounters between Georges Mathieu and Zao Wou‑Ki—beginning in 1948 through galleries, fellow painters, and group exhibitions—mark a brief moment of proximity before their artistic paths diverged. Each moved toward a horizon opposite to his origins: Zao, having mastered Chinese painting, turned toward Western abstraction, while Mathieu, as André Malraux noted, abandoned familiar pictorial traditions to become a “Western calligrapher.”

Yet the two artists remained connected through shared fascinations. Both were deeply engaged with the emergence of post-war American painting—drawn to figures such as Marc Tobey, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Their mutual reverence for Henri Michaux, whom Mathieu hailed as “the greatest poet,” and their admiration for painters like Hans Hartung, Willi Baumeister, and Wols further aligned their sensibilities.

They also moved within parallel artistic networks,
exhibiting successively at Galerie Pierre Loeb in Paris and Kootz Gallery in New York. These intersections reveal a dialogue shaped not by similarity, but by reciprocal curiosity and shared artistic frontiers.