Signed in English and Chinese on bottom right; signed in English and dated on the reverse. The above quote is from an extensive report published in the February 1954 issue of Life magazine in the United States, titled Artist from the East - Zao Wou-Ki. The article featured four of Zao's works, three of which were painted in 1952. During this period, the artist's paintings used light and agile black lines against a dreamy, misty backdrop of colour, depicting scenes such as eye-catching church landscapes, wilderness scenes, and still life objects. This also indicates that the first major success in Zao's creative journey after arriving in France in 1948 and spending years in tireless exploration first started to bear fruit in 1952. At this point, the artist had already developed his own highly distinctive style, which quickly gained him recognition from the academic world and art collectors. It was in that year Zao Wou-Ki was invited to hold solo exhibitions at the Patti Birch Gallery in New York and the Main Street Gallery in Chicago. In Paris, he signed a two-year contract with the renowned Galerie Pierre. At that time, Zao lit up the sky like a brilliant comet and left his mark on Europe and the United States. Today, Zao Wou-Ki is recognised as a giant of Chinese abstract painting and his works can be found in the collections of more than 150 major art museums and institutions around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum and the Tate in London, and the Ishibashi Museum of Art in Tokyo. Furthermore, in the 1968 edition of History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture & Photography detailing the progress of modernism from the 19th to 20th centuries, compiled by renowned American art historian Harvard Arnason, a must-read work for anyone interested in the history of modern art of the past 20 years or more, the only Chinese artists featured are Zao Wou-Ki and I. M. Pei. This affirms Zao's elevated status in terms of post-World War II modern art development in both the East and West. In this spring auction, we are honoured to present Great Ship Entering a Harbour, an important work rich in a wide range of elements and imbued with an epic composition, created during the artist's first creative peak in 1952.