.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
MONUMENTAL FORMATS
In 1990, Chu Teh-Chun moved to a larger studio in Vitry-sur-Seine, just outside of Paris. Now able to work in a high-ceiling studio surrounded by large windows allowing natural light to take over as main source of lighting, the artist gradually moved away from his snow series to explore with large formats. Working on vast surfaces helps him push the boundaries of his language and exploration. As his support grew bigger, so did his material: he used wide and supple brushes, which provide a multitude of options to work with colour depth and composition.
Among his large formats from the 1990s, Stability figures among a specific series. During that decade, fewer than ten were painted in square format measuring two by two metres. Published multiple times, Stability is the most beautiful, where the powerful contrast of large strokes of light emerging from obscurity illustrates the artist’s creation of a new language. He began to shift towards inner explorations, which the artist described as "roaming among my memories." Spiritually he travelled far and wide, freely portraying the inner scenery he envisioned, and thus produced this series of works. French art critic Jean-Francois Chabrun once described Chu Teh-Chun as a "20th century Song Dynasty painter", praising him for integrating creative spirits of Western abstract art with traditional Chinese landscape compositions and poetic portrayals of time and space.
QUEST FOR LIGHT
In order to capture the fast-changing and fluid light, Chu created a translucent paint that rendered an ethereal brushstroke. Oil paint has never before been so feathery and impalpable. Coloured masses are light and tender, almost as if they were washes of ink on rice paper, dancing along the rhythm created by refractions of light. Thin and translucent paint surrounds the denser masses, with light interlacing and reflecting, in a rendering close to Song Dynasty painter Fan Kuan. Imageries floating down, circulating, wandering around, we see through clouds the real, the fabled, the discernible and the intangible.
In 1990, Chu Teh-Chun and his wife Chu Ching-Chao travelled to Venice in Italy. Chu had had first revelation in 1956 when he discovered Nicolas de Stael’s work during a retrospective at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, setting up a path toward abstraction. He realised he could express the essence of his vision through abstract blocks of colour. His trip to Venice however exposed him to Italian masters Tintoretto, Titien, Giorgione, Carpaccio, Veronese. Our painting Stability directly draws from Chu’s study of Renaissance practice of chiaroscuro.
DRAMATIC COMPOSITION
At the beginning of the 1990s, Chu was deeply affected by geopolitical events of the time, in particular the Gulf War. His painting Light Beyond Plagues was the first of the series to reflect on his feeling and reaction to dark and violent events of the world. The emergence of light provides a glimpse of hope , which is expressed in his painting Hope painted in 1991. Stability was painted two years later, and seemingly conveys Chu’s interpretation of the situation. In this context, the title of the painting becomes an important component of the artist’s work. Allying poetry and painting, as is the tradition in Chinese literati tradition, the subtle multitude of colours, the depth of field, and the energy of the brush stroke help define Stability as an essential masterpiece in Chu Teh-Chun’s body of work.
As Chu’s work reached a high level of maturity in the 1990s, so does his international recognition. By this time, he had travelled back to Asia, and started to exhibit regularly in Asia, following his first important retrospective in 1987 in Taiwan. Stability travelled to Canada for an exhibition on Riopelle, Kijno and Chu. These three artists all had a different approach to the influence of their original background in their work once they had been exposed to the Parisian art scene. Stability epitomizes Chu’s ability to grow stronger from his initial cultural and artistic training to explore in his own way the essence of nature.
In 1990, Chu Teh-Chun moved to a larger studio in Vitry-sur-Seine, just outside of Paris. Now able to work in a high-ceiling studio surrounded by large windows allowing natural light to take over as main source of lighting, the artist gradually moved away from his snow series to explore with large formats. Working on vast surfaces helps him push the boundaries of his language and exploration. As his support grew bigger, so did his material: he used wide and supple brushes, which provide a multitude of options to work with colour depth and composition.
Among his large formats from the 1990s, Stability figures among a specific series. During that decade, fewer than ten were painted in square format measuring two by two metres. Published multiple times, Stability is the most beautiful, where the powerful contrast of large strokes of light emerging from obscurity illustrates the artist’s creation of a new language. He began to shift towards inner explorations, which the artist described as "roaming among my memories." Spiritually he travelled far and wide, freely portraying the inner scenery he envisioned, and thus produced this series of works. French art critic Jean-Francois Chabrun once described Chu Teh-Chun as a "20th century Song Dynasty painter", praising him for integrating creative spirits of Western abstract art with traditional Chinese landscape compositions and poetic portrayals of time and space.
QUEST FOR LIGHT
In order to capture the fast-changing and fluid light, Chu created a translucent paint that rendered an ethereal brushstroke. Oil paint has never before been so feathery and impalpable. Coloured masses are light and tender, almost as if they were washes of ink on rice paper, dancing along the rhythm created by refractions of light. Thin and translucent paint surrounds the denser masses, with light interlacing and reflecting, in a rendering close to Song Dynasty painter Fan Kuan. Imageries floating down, circulating, wandering around, we see through clouds the real, the fabled, the discernible and the intangible.
In 1990, Chu Teh-Chun and his wife Chu Ching-Chao travelled to Venice in Italy. Chu had had first revelation in 1956 when he discovered Nicolas de Stael’s work during a retrospective at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, setting up a path toward abstraction. He realised he could express the essence of his vision through abstract blocks of colour. His trip to Venice however exposed him to Italian masters Tintoretto, Titien, Giorgione, Carpaccio, Veronese. Our painting Stability directly draws from Chu’s study of Renaissance practice of chiaroscuro.
DRAMATIC COMPOSITION
At the beginning of the 1990s, Chu was deeply affected by geopolitical events of the time, in particular the Gulf War. His painting Light Beyond Plagues was the first of the series to reflect on his feeling and reaction to dark and violent events of the world. The emergence of light provides a glimpse of hope , which is expressed in his painting Hope painted in 1991. Stability was painted two years later, and seemingly conveys Chu’s interpretation of the situation. In this context, the title of the painting becomes an important component of the artist’s work. Allying poetry and painting, as is the tradition in Chinese literati tradition, the subtle multitude of colours, the depth of field, and the energy of the brush stroke help define Stability as an essential masterpiece in Chu Teh-Chun’s body of work.
As Chu’s work reached a high level of maturity in the 1990s, so does his international recognition. By this time, he had travelled back to Asia, and started to exhibit regularly in Asia, following his first important retrospective in 1987 in Taiwan. Stability travelled to Canada for an exhibition on Riopelle, Kijno and Chu. These three artists all had a different approach to the influence of their original background in their work once they had been exposed to the Parisian art scene. Stability epitomizes Chu’s ability to grow stronger from his initial cultural and artistic training to explore in his own way the essence of nature.