Taipei Dangdai

For the gallery’s inaugural participation in Taipei Dangdai, Waddington Custot presents a booth that reflects its rich heritage and expertise in modern and contemporary art. Alongside paintings by masters of gestural abstraction Pierre Soulages and Hans Hartung, and contemporary artworks by Fernando Botero and Ian Davenport, Waddington Custot exhibits a selection of exceptional pieces by artists with strong connections to Asia and whose work the gallery has endorsed for decades.

Within this curated selection, Waddington Custot spotlights the acclaimed pioneer, Beijing-born Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki, through examples of his stirring early work and the magnificent abstractions for which he is celebrated, and which feature in important collections across Taiwan. Alongside Zao’s masterpieces are superb paintings in oil, gouache and ink by his contemporary, Chu Teh-Chun, who has particularly close connections to Taiwan having taught at the National Taiwan Normal University. In 1987, Chu was honoured with exhibitions at the National Museum of History in Taipei.

Reflecting the gallery’s focus on monumental sculpture, Waddington Custot display two large corten steel sculptures by French artist Bernar Venet. Venet’s powerful sculptures have been presented in major historical shows at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, as well in outdoor solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including the Shanghai Sculpture Park.

A further artist with close ties to Asia highlighted by Waddington Custot on the Taipei Dangdai booth is French painter Fabienne Verdier. After almost a decade of living in China, Verdier wrote a bestselling memoir that reflected on her formative creative experiences there, having learnt traditional painting from masters of calligraphy. Over the course of her career Verdier has developed these skills into the monumental contemporary paintings for which she is renowned.