May Zao

The artistic and personal partnership between May Zao and Zao Wou‑Ki unfolded within the intimate space of their home and studio on rue Jonquoy, Paris, where their lives intertwined from May’s arrival in Paris in 1958 until her death in 1972. Born Chan May‑Kan in Hong Kong in 1930, May was first an actress for film and theatre before discovering sculpture in Paris—an expressive refuge in a new language and a foreign world. Under the gentle guidance of Martine Boileau and Étienne Hajdu, she developed a sculptural vocabulary marked by instinct, organic form, and moments of clarity carved from periods of psychological struggle.

During these same years, Zao entered a period of profound artistic maturity, moving fully into lyrical abstraction. Their shared studio fostered a mutual exchange of energy: May’s tactile, life‑driven forms resonated with Zao’s atmospheric, elemental canvases.

The present sculpture, coming from the personal collection
of Sin-May Zao, May and Wou-Ki’s daughter, was showed in a 1972 Homage exhibition at the Galerie de France in dialogue with Zao Wou-Ki’s first ink works.