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Lot Essay
Chu Teh- Chun studied at the Hangzhou National Academy of Arts, where the free style of teaching by artists such as Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu, and Pan Tianshou provided inspiration and helped him develop a firm foundation in both modern Western and traditional Chinese painting techniques. In 1955, Chu moved to Paris, at a time when abstraction was sweeping through not only the city but the Western art world as a whole. As Chu Teh-Chun pondered how to move from representative depictions of natural forms to a non-figurative, abstract mode, Pan Tianshou’s dictum that artists should “develop the new from the old” guided him to the masters of Chinese ink landscapes, whose work he had always admired.
Greatly inspired by de Stael’s geometric color blocks, Rembrandt’s masterful use of light and chiaroscuro , Pan Tianshou’s simplification of the Chinese landscape and Zhang Daqian’s calligraphic style, Chu Teh-Chun searched for new forms of representation from the late 1950s. The 1960s works demonstrate how he has mastered his acquired technique.
In No. 273 , completed in 1968, Chu uses a wide variety of brushstrokes - these include heavy swipes, light presses, thin brushes, and thick smears. In a remarkable composition structured around intensely calligraphic lines, Chu creates a dramatic visual experience bursting with energy. Confidence exudes from his rich brushwork. The beginning, continuity, undulations, and conclusion of each brushstroke reveal the deep foundations in calligraphy which Chu accumulated since childhood. The opposition of horizontal and vertical lines, of long and short strokes produces an intensely rhythmic effect. The broad lines are forceful and sweeping, delivered with a sense of speed, executed with the full energy of the entire body. The fine gnarled lines are dense and constrained. The exuberant brushstrokes in the right side of the middle section gushes with energy, calling to the mind of the spectator a waterfall cascading down a Chinese traditional landscape painting. Large monochromatic pools surrounding it come to balance the dynamic composition, contained in a square-shaped canvas, quite rare for Chu. Only this regular and symmetrical format can bring stability to contain such an energetic work, and is perhaps a reference to Lin Fengmian’s frequent choice of square formats.
The high degree of control in Chu's lines and forms is equaled by his unique sense of color in this work. Chu often managed his pictorial space with deep-toned hues for coloristic effects that vibrate and reverberate throughout the canvas. In No. 273, strong contrasts of red and blue transform a grand landscape into an abstract work of fertile energy, releasing the powerful visual energy of color itself and combining it with line to form a mysterious and dramatic space. The tension created between the juxtaposed rich red and deep blue fills the scene with a drama that culminates at the white light source piercing through the dark nebula at the center of the composition. The upper part of the painting is applied with a uniform stretch of ochre, a resting area for the eye like a dusky sky amidst the fiery energy. The beauty and structural feel in No. 273 derive from the energies inherent in its colors.
This visual experience recalls the painting Contemplating upon an Autumn Landscape that Zhang Daqian created in Brazil in 1967, one year prior to No. 273. In the late 1960s Zhang's sight was failing, which spurred him to leave behind his meticulous gongbi style and reach new heights with his unique reinvention of "splashed ink" and "splashed color" practices. Within Zhang's autumn landscape, dazzling red maple trees appear indistinctly out of a deep blue and gray fog over an emerald Wuting Lake, a perfect reference point for Chu Teh-Chun's peerless expression of color and deployment of space in No.273.
Completed the year of the birth of his son Yvon, this painting illustrates the unbridled energy of the artist in his full expressive maturity. Perfectly merging the Eastern calligraphic brushwork and Western oil painting expressivity, Chu reshapes the world into a new kind of space imbued with remarkable poetry.
Greatly inspired by de Stael’s geometric color blocks, Rembrandt’s masterful use of light and chiaroscuro , Pan Tianshou’s simplification of the Chinese landscape and Zhang Daqian’s calligraphic style, Chu Teh-Chun searched for new forms of representation from the late 1950s. The 1960s works demonstrate how he has mastered his acquired technique.
In No. 273 , completed in 1968, Chu uses a wide variety of brushstrokes - these include heavy swipes, light presses, thin brushes, and thick smears. In a remarkable composition structured around intensely calligraphic lines, Chu creates a dramatic visual experience bursting with energy. Confidence exudes from his rich brushwork. The beginning, continuity, undulations, and conclusion of each brushstroke reveal the deep foundations in calligraphy which Chu accumulated since childhood. The opposition of horizontal and vertical lines, of long and short strokes produces an intensely rhythmic effect. The broad lines are forceful and sweeping, delivered with a sense of speed, executed with the full energy of the entire body. The fine gnarled lines are dense and constrained. The exuberant brushstrokes in the right side of the middle section gushes with energy, calling to the mind of the spectator a waterfall cascading down a Chinese traditional landscape painting. Large monochromatic pools surrounding it come to balance the dynamic composition, contained in a square-shaped canvas, quite rare for Chu. Only this regular and symmetrical format can bring stability to contain such an energetic work, and is perhaps a reference to Lin Fengmian’s frequent choice of square formats.
The high degree of control in Chu's lines and forms is equaled by his unique sense of color in this work. Chu often managed his pictorial space with deep-toned hues for coloristic effects that vibrate and reverberate throughout the canvas. In No. 273, strong contrasts of red and blue transform a grand landscape into an abstract work of fertile energy, releasing the powerful visual energy of color itself and combining it with line to form a mysterious and dramatic space. The tension created between the juxtaposed rich red and deep blue fills the scene with a drama that culminates at the white light source piercing through the dark nebula at the center of the composition. The upper part of the painting is applied with a uniform stretch of ochre, a resting area for the eye like a dusky sky amidst the fiery energy. The beauty and structural feel in No. 273 derive from the energies inherent in its colors.
This visual experience recalls the painting Contemplating upon an Autumn Landscape that Zhang Daqian created in Brazil in 1967, one year prior to No. 273. In the late 1960s Zhang's sight was failing, which spurred him to leave behind his meticulous gongbi style and reach new heights with his unique reinvention of "splashed ink" and "splashed color" practices. Within Zhang's autumn landscape, dazzling red maple trees appear indistinctly out of a deep blue and gray fog over an emerald Wuting Lake, a perfect reference point for Chu Teh-Chun's peerless expression of color and deployment of space in No.273.
Completed the year of the birth of his son Yvon, this painting illustrates the unbridled energy of the artist in his full expressive maturity. Perfectly merging the Eastern calligraphic brushwork and Western oil painting expressivity, Chu reshapes the world into a new kind of space imbued with remarkable poetry.