WHEN abstract painter Zao Wou-ki arrived in France in 1948, he did not expect that he, a young Chinese student simply hoping to improve his painting skills, would become a bridge connecting the East and the West.

    But Zao would live and work in Europe for about 65 years. He became that bridge in many ways, with a personality as colorful as his art. He died April 9 in Switzerland, at the age of 92.

    As a member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts, Zao was considered to be one of the most successful Chinese painters alive in his lifetime. One of his paintings recently sold for a record price equivalent to US$2 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.

    His works, first influenced by Paul Klee, were orientated to abstraction. He named them with a date from when he worked on them, and in them, masses of colors appeared to materialize a creating world, like a big bang. Drawing inspiration from Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne, Zao channeled his passion into traditional Chinese painting. His combination of Western and Eastern artistic styles and skills helped build his reputation in Western art circles.

    Born in 1921 in Beiping (today’s Beijing), Zao was a descendant of the imperial family of the Song Dynasty. He was attracted to literature and history at an early age, and was already a good little painter by the time he was 10.

    “My father was a banker and an amateur painter who once won an artist’s prize in Panama. He encouraged me and sent me to the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts when I was 14,” Zao once said in an interview with Chinese-language media. “My grandfather once told me that of all forms of art, Chinese calligraphy was the only one which could make the best expression of feelings and emotions. This was very important to me and I would never forget it.”

    During his six years at the Hangzhou art school, Zao learned from famous Chinese painting masters Wu Dayu and Pan Tianshou. He was nearly expelled by the school for copying works by the “Four Wang” — famous Chinese painters surnamed Wang, from the Qing Dynasty — casually while doing his homework.

    “As a confident young man, I did not like their works, so I just did my works casually,” Zao said. “Pan was very angry with me, but luckily I got through it and became a lecturer at the school.”

    His first solo exhibition was held in Chongqing after his graduation, and Zao quickly became a rising star in Chinese painting circles as his creative style brought a fresh breeze to wartime China.

    “Later, the president of the school said I could go abroad to improve my skills and then return to the school to be a professor,” Zao said. “He said that I’d better not stay abroad, though, because it would be hard to survive there. He did not expect that I would not return until 24 years later.”

    After spending 36 days on a voyage to Europe, Zao reached Marseille. When he arrived in Paris one afternoon, he went straight to the Louvre, where he found an amazing world of art and colors.

    In 1949 he met Henri Michaux, a French poet who helped him publish his first collection. The collection later earned Zao a contract with a gallery.

    “My first work in France was painting for stamps. In the 1950s, different schools of art were blooming, emphasizing the subjective nature of art. When I had just arrived in France, French artists were trying to look for Eastern factors. The concepts behind my work and the traditional Chinese styles I had were what they were looking for. I went there to learn painting, but they discovered China from me,” Zao said.

    Zao’s first wife, Xie Jinglan, was a renowned Chinese musician. After she left him in 1957, Zao went to New York, where he was inspired by the freshness and spontaneity of American art.

    After living in New York for a short while, he met his second wife, Chen Meiqin — an actress-turned-sculptor better known as May Choo — in Hong Kong. That was a wonderful time for Zao. The couple worked hard on their own art every day and jointly held an exhibition in Paris.

    Chen died of depression and illness in 1972, at the age of 41. For a long while after that, Zao lost his passion and his motivation to paint.

    A few weeks after her death, Zao returned to China for the first time since he’d left it, 24 years earlier. When he was asked why he’d decided to make a journey to his homeland at such a moment, he merely said his mother was ill.

    But the trip gave him the distance he needed to stand back and evaluate the tragedy that had befallen him.

    When he returned to France in the same year, he painted “En Memorie de May (In Memory of May).” The massive canvas depicts a dark landscape lit by light and powerfully conveys both loss and the eternal existence of human optimism. Zao’s emotion had finally been expressed through ink painting. Within a short period of time, he painted more than 100 ink paintings, most of which were later exhibited in France together with works by his beloved second wife.

    His work brightened and bloomed once more. He’d long been embraced by the art world in the West. Finally, in 1983, Zao was invited by the Ministry of Culture to hold his first solo exhibition in Beijing.

    Even in his later years, Zao never had an assistant.

    “I painted for myself and I was never satisfied,” he said in 2003.

    He could only finish about 10 to 20 works a year, because he frequently changed or repainted his works.

    “I always changed. I painted like this today and would change to that the next day, so my painting was very slow. Sometimes I put the date on the painting, but the date was actually the day when it was born,” he said.

    His painting life ceased, however, several years before his death.

    In the autumn of 2011, Zao was suffering from senile dementia and moved to Switzerland under the arrangement of his third wife, French art curator Francoise Marquet.

    Marquet brought about 400 of Zao’s works, worth billions of yuan, to Switzerland, which caused a family dispute. Zao’s only son, Zhao Jialing, sued Marquet in Paris, saying Marquet intended to occupy Zao’s works illegally and without Zao’s permission.

    According to a property agreement reached by Zao and Marquet, Marquet had no right to deal with Zao’s property. However, because the case involves different laws in Switzerland and France, complications have arisen and no ruling has yet been reached. (Wang Yuanyuan)