CHU TEH-CHUN | Abstract

Private Collection, Asia
Shanghai Dowmin Auctions, Shanghai, 25 October 2012, Lot 522
Private Collection
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is lighter and brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals some very faint rub marks to all four extreme edges. Further close inspection reveals some light canvas draw to all four corner tips. Inspection under ultra-violet light reveals some uneven fluorescence, which is consistent with underlayers of paint.
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Through his sumptuous abstract style that brilliantly married a Chinese heritage with a Western education, Chu Teh-Chun aesthetically and conceptually bridged the gap between Eastern and Western art. 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, Abstract is a superlative and sublime example 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, we might even detect the impact of Pierre Soulages in the broad pulls of deep purple 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 black paint, almost legible in their cursive quickness, and in the twitching central spots, 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. It identifies the Abstract as the product of an artist entirely fluent in his own visual language and operating at the very apex of his powers.