Chu Teh-Chun

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1998

Brussels, Galerie Marc Milstain, Chu Teh-Chun, 1999

Pierre Restany and Enrico Navarra, Chu Teh-Chun: Monographie des Peintures, Paris 2000, p. 284, illustrated in colour 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Chu Teh-Chun was one of the foremost Chinese painters of the Twentieth Century. Through his sumptuous abstract style, he aesthetically and conceptually bridged the gap between Eastern and Western art. Avant la Mémoire was created at the height of his powers, only a year after he had become the first non-French painter to be honoured with a membership to the Academie des Beaux-Arts. In its poetic approximations of nature, in its bold fusion of Eastern and Western traditions, and in the sublime beauty of its contrasts between light and shade, this work is superlative and amongst the very best examples of Chu’s distinctive oeuvre.

Having established himself as a successful artist in his native China, Chu moved to France in 1955. He was already a painter of nature, already deft in brushwork and adept at composition, but was enthralled by the European use of light. In particular, Chu was impressed by the manner in which the Impressionists flooded their works with vibrant shimmering colour, how their forms and motifs seemed to lift off the canvas in visions of exuberant light. He adored their landscape paintings and relied on them greatly in the development of his cross-cultural style. However, where those French painters had championed painting en plein air, focusing their image on a specific view or specific subject, often even at a specific time of day, Chu was decidedly entrenched in the history of Chinese artistic traditions. He absorbed nature in its entirety before distilling it into his all-encompassing compositions which were formulated, conceived, and executed entirely within the confines of his studio.

A sense of fusion abounds in the aesthetics of the present work: the debt to French precedents is palpable. We might observe the short jabbing strokes of colour, punctuating the composition with moments of studied force, and directly reminiscent of Paul Cézanne in their powerful energy. Meanwhile, the central gemstone shapes of pink, yellow and green seem to recall the blocky delineations of Nicolas de Staël, an artist who Chu acknowledged as an influence. We might even detect the impact of Pierre Soulages in the broad pulls of deep turquoise that swathe the right-hand side of the canvas.

However, there is also much that is Chinese about this work: in the straight sharp strokes of green, almost straw-like in their cursive quickness, and in the twitching central coloured clusters, Chu demonstrates his mastery of brushwork, and alludes to the calligraphic tradition of his heritage. Furthermore, in a Chinese context, those same broad sweeping strokes that appear to recall Soulages, are redolent of the fading misty style of Song dynasty scrolls, depicting mountains, waterfalls, and other epic subjects of nature in delicate watercolour.

Avant la Mémoire is charged with the concepts of Yin and Yang. According to Daoist principles, Yin is dark and damp, a negative deleterious force. Here it is expressed in the combs of murky turquoise, the shadowy depths of green, and the spots of bluish black. Yang is the opposite: fiery, bright and tenacious. In the present work it bursts from the upper left corner in a cloud of diffuse light, and twinkles and winks from the central knots of colour. Some areas seem almost to vibrate with hot energy, while others suck and droop, pulling the viewer in and engaging them further. In keeping with I Ching theory, these opposing forces balance perfectly; their contrasts fill the work with a gregarious vivaciousness and an enchanting sense of counterpoint. The depth of this duality is characteristically Chinese, and distinct to Chu’s indomitable style. It identifies the present work as the product of an artist entirely fluent in his own visual language and operating at the very apex of his powers.