Zao Wou-Ki (Chinese: 赵无极; pinyin: Zhào Wújí; Wade–Giles: Chao Wu-chi; 1 February 1920 – 9 April 2013[1]) was a Chinese-French painter.

[2] Zao Wou-Ki graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he studied under French-trained Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu.

[3] In his childhood he was brought back to his hometown Dantu where he studied calligraphy and gained acceptance to the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts.

[3] From 1935 to 1941, he studied painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where he was taught by Lin Fengmian, Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu.

In 1948, he went with his wife Xie Jinglan (謝景蘭), a composer, to Paris to live on the same block in Montparnasse where the classes of Émile Othon Friesz took place.

In 1957, Zao decided to visit the United States where his younger brother Chao Wu-Wai was living in Montclair, New Jersey, close to the art scene of New York City.

[4] He left the U.S. after a six-week stay, traveling to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong, where he met his second wife Chan May-Kan (陈美琴, May Zao), a film actress who had two children from her first marriage.

He names them with the date in which he finishes them, and in them, masses of colours appear to materialise a creating world, like a Big Bang, where light structures the canvas.