In 1926, Henri Michaux attended the Paul Klee exhibition at the Galerie Pierre and rediscovered his love for painting. In 1938, he exhibited his small paintings on black backgrounds at that same gallery. In 1949, Michaux was introduced to Zao Wou-Ki’s lithographs and invited Pierre Loeb to discover the young Chinese artist’s work. Loeb purchased 11 of his paintings and signed a contract binding them until 1957. This space, steeped in history, art, and friendship, is now home to the Berthet-Aittouarès Gallery, which has long maintained a special relationship with Zao Wou-Ki and with Michaux’s work: both artists are regularly exhibited at the gallery.

​

This year, to celebrate the gallery’s 40th anniversary—and bringing history full circle—mother and daughter are organizing an exhibition bringing together the two artists: Henri Michaux, the painter-poet born in Wallonia in 1899, and Zao Wou-Ki, the Franco-Chinese painter and printmaker and a leading figure of the lyrical abstraction movement. Upon arriving in France in 1948 and immediately setting to work, Zao Wou-Ki created his first lithographs. Instantly captivated, Michaux composed a series of texts based on eight of Zao Wou-Ki’s lithographs. This marked the beginning of a beautiful friendship that would bind the two men until Michaux’s death in 1984.

​

Today, the Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès pays tribute to these two great artists with the exhibition Zao Wou-Ki – Henri Michaux: Chine – Occident, which spans the period from their meeting in 1949 to the major phase of their Chinese ink paintings in the 1970s. For Zao Wou-Ki, the 1970s were marked by the loss of his father, who died in 1968, and by his wife’s illness and subsequent death in 1972. Michaux convinced him to return to Chinese ink...

​

The exhibition, consisting primarily of Chinese ink paintings and watercolors, is structured around a dialogue between these two great artists, Zao Wou-Ki and Henri Michaux.