Zao Wou-Ki

Zao Wou‑Ki’s ceramic works, though few in number, illuminate how the artist explored abstraction across unexpected mediums. His earliest known pieces—bowls and dishes created around 1954, now held at the Musée Cernuschi—reveal his fascination with transforming clay into a painterly surface. These vessels, often made in collaboration with potters, bear Zao’s unmistakable hand through bold calligraphic strokes and abstract signs derived from ancient oracle‑bone scripts, hallmarks of his mid‑1950s pictorial language.

Untitled, executed circa 1954, is a unique work and a rare
example of Zao’s early experimentation with clay. He would come back to the medium more than fifty years later to create editioned steles and vases with established French manufacturers like Sèvres, Bernardaud and La Tuilerie.