Art Basel, Hong Kong

Dominique Lévy specialises in 20th century art with a program that bridges parallel movements in Europe, America, and Asia, and explores global tendencies in modern and contemporary art through curated exhibitions, original scholarship, and new publications. The presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong will highlight the post-war dialogue between Paris and Asia, illustrated in the work of Kazuo Shiraga, Pierre Soulages, and Zao Wou-Ki.

Soulages and Zao met in Paris in the 1950s, having moved there after World War II from Rodez in southern France and China, respectively. They were connected by a rejection of representation and geometric abstraction, as well as an interest in Eastern art. Soulages, inspired by travels to Japan in 1958 and the assertive beauty of calligraphy and ink drawings, used thick, gestural strokes to create compositions of black bars in front of a white background. These black structures evolved over time to dominate the canvas entirely and create his iconic black paintings. Zao came to France in 1948 and combined the Asian traditions of his early study with the developments he saw in Western abstraction. He became a prominent member of the cultural group at France’s centre, exhibiting regularly in the 1950s at the Pierre Loeb Gallery in Paris, with his first solo exhibition at Galerie de France in 1957.

United by a common aesthetic and an intuitive, gestural form of expression, the work of Kazuo Shiraga and the Gutai group also caught the attention of Parisians during the 1950s. Critics and curators travelled to Japan to discover the work they had read about in the internationally distributed Gutai journal, interested in the similarities between Abstract Expressionism in the United States, and Art Informel in Europe. Following his 1957 visit to Osaka where he met Shiraga, the French curator and critic Michel Tapié urged the artist to send work to Paris to be shown throughout Europe. In November 1959, Shiraga’s work was exhibited in Galerie Stadler in Paris in the group show Métamorphismes. Shiraga’s first ever solo exhibition was in fact at Galerie Stadler in January 1962, not in his native Japan.

By juxtaposing artists who worked across different decades, countries, and styles, and yet were influenced by each other in many ways, Dominique Lévy invites viewers to partake in a fresh dialogue in the prevailing movements around the globe during the second half of the 20th century.

Artists Exhibited:
Yayoi Kusama
Takashi Murakami
Pierre Soulages
Kazuo Shiraga
Cy Twombly
Zao Wou-Ki