29.01.64
Oil on canvas triptych by Zao Wou-Ki (1964). A large-scale three-panel abstraction dated by day, month, and year in Zao's system — 29 January 1964. The triptych spans monumental dimensions and exemplifies the mature lyrical abstraction of his 1960s peak: atmospheric fields of luminous colour punctuated by gestural passages of dark calligraphic incident, evoking landscape, atmosphere, and cosmological space without depicting any of them. Sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 1 April 2018, for HK$510,800,000 (approximately $65.2 million USD) — the world auction record for any work by an Asian artist.
Scholarly Significance
Zao Wou-Ki's record triptych; Sotheby's HK 2018 HK$510.8M (~$65.2M) — Asian artist auction record. Anchors Asian modern art market layer.
Notes
- ·The dating system (DD.MM.YY) was adopted by Zao in the late 1950s as a deliberate rejection of iconographic titling — the date is the only indexical anchor to the work's world.
- ·1964 represents Zao's mature period: large-format canvases with deep spatial ambiguity, Chinese calligraphic gesture fused with Western atmospheric colour.
- ·Sotheby's Hong Kong auction, 1 April 2018: HK$510,800,000 (~USD 65,200,000) — world record for any Asian artist at auction.
- ·The record broke the previous Asian artist record (also held by Zao Wou-Ki) and placed him in the same commercial tier as top Western blue-chip artists.
- ·Preceded at the same sale by strong results for other Chinese-French modernists including Sanyu and Chu Teh-Chun.