Although contemporaries, the two postwar masters of painting never met, and the exhibition at Lévy Gorvy marks the first time their work will be presented together. With a selection of over twenty paintings spanning from the late 1940s through the early 1980s, ‘Willem de Kooning | Zao Wou-Ki’ intends to bridge an East-West dialogue, placing the two artists in conversation by means of their work. De Kooning’s Sail Cloth and Zao’s Untitled, both created in 1949, open the exhibition and indelibly illuminate ways in which issues of surface, representation, depth, and coloration would similarly preoccupy both artists throughout their careers. Seminal large-scale canvases – including such key museum loans as Zao’s Montagne déchirée (1955 – 56) from the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and de Kooning’s Untitled (1962) from the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. – will be on view. And side-by-side juxtapositions will reveal striking affinities between the two artists, suggesting heretofore unrecognized connections between the ways in which de Kooning and Zao addressed composition and motif to achieve breakthroughs that remain relevant to contemporary painting.
Lévy Gorvy will present a series of programs in conjunction with ‘Willem de Kooning | Zao Wou-Ki.’ The gallery has published a fully illustrated hardbound catalogue featuring essays by leading scholars, including Robert E. Harrist Jr., Jane and Leopold Swergold Professor of Chinese Art History at Columbia University; and Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister of France. In addition, the book will contain original poems by Cole Swenson and Diane Walt, as well as a chronology contextualizing the two painters in the rich goings-on in China, Paris, and America at the time, constructed by Melissa Walt.
