Among the generation of modern Chinese artists for whom abstraction was the focus of creativity, Chu Teh-Chun, Zao Wou-ki and Wu Guanzhong have achieved the greatest success. It seems hardly coincidental that each of them once studied with earlier masters of the first generation, in particular Lin Fengmian and Wu Dayu, and thus became successors to the artistic tradition of the Hangzhou Academy of the Arts. All eminent artists for synthesizing Chinese and Western aesthetics yet committed to preserving their philosophical roots, Chu Teh-Chun's art exhibits three special features: the dexterous application of lines with a calligraphic feel, closely knit, architectonic compositions, rich layering effects in the colors and sources of light within his paintings.

Composition No. 79 was painted at the height of his creative maturing, encapsulating his personal theories on the teachings of Taoism and advancing for the fusion of the aesthetics of modern western abstraction and impressionistic Chinese landscape painting to produce a new kind of existential artistic immersion of 'abstract nature painting'. Chu discovered a realm of new possibilities for exploration by later generations of modern Chinese artists, becoming one of the most iconic figures of Asian Art in the last century, where the beauty and originality of his paintings soon astonished the art world. In 1960, he was invited to show his work at the prestigious Paris School Exhibition, an event that was a tremendous affirmation of his success, and in the same year, he also mounted a solo show at one of the major proponents of abstraction, the Galerie Legendre. Thus in 1960 he had clearly established a reputation; works ranging the gamut from representational to abstraction were garnering praise and recognition throughout the art world in France; critics introduced him to new audiences and newspapers and magazines gave him space in special features.

Preserving the spirit resonance of Song dynasty paintings, Chu depicts soaring mountains and the immeasurable power of nature to present the inner harmony of man and nature in rhythms of clashing colors and solid layers of paint mimicking the graphic intensity of Abstract Expressionism of the West. Poised between untamed expression and conscious control; friction and simplicity; abstraction and figuration, Chu's Composition No. 79 (Lot 1017) lurk subtle layers of aggression and beauty, drawing the viewer into its enigmatic universe. A complementary palette to Chinese traditional ink paintings, deep hues of black flood from the top and invade the lower space, arresting our visual experience in its shifting scale and color variation. Slashing rigorously, restless in its action, the dynamic brush strokes generate a visual chaos yet its force is subtly mediated by the singular use of the black palette. Perhaps empathizing with Wassily Kandinsky's wistful poetry for color, as Kandinsky once said 'When [blue] sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. When it rise towards the whiteK it appeal to men grows weaker and more distant'. 'Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality', Chu confronts his deepest human emotions and anxieties and expresses through the towering blocks of black, scratched strokes in sharp, thin vertical lines pulsating in anxiety, almost calligraphic in its spontaneity of the smears but controlled in its performance. The struggling yet compromising brushstrokes penetrate his canvas as his eager venture to find the divine harmony of the physical world, whilst the procedure of painting developed as a channel for his self-discovery.

Chu admiration for 10th century painter Fan Kuan and his principle of 'learning form nature is better than learning from man, and the human heart is an even greater source of learning than nature' is clearly presented as he delivers the quintessence of Yuan and Song Dynasty landscapes. Chu exploits and analyzes tonal gradation of black and furthermore explores other colors that share similar density but with heightened chromacity, thus opting blue as the secondary but a vital palette, inspired from the fleeting hints of blue and green of black ink in traditional ink painting. Chu seizes the canvas with linear thrusts of charcoal black in multidirectional textures, vigorously crossing path from each other with flashes of blue, imbuing it with heavy emotional intensity, simultaneously highlighting the incomprehensible expansion of the cosmos and its sacred force.

Composition No. 79 manifests a cragginess and complexity that engulf the overall image but the aesthetic conclusion is astoundingly sublime and pleasing to the eye. The richness of the pale, powdered blue on the bottom of the landscape lightens the perceptual weight. When disentangling his swift, plentiful brushstrokes, we see a rather simple composition that attends to Cezanne's theory on composition "Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth ... Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth"; the subject matter is rooted in vertical mass on the centre, swirling terse paints providing a horizon to direct all roaming eyes back to the fresh, flickering light of electric white and blue. The wealth of paint layers kindle subtle gradation and depth emanating a gentle luminosity of the fog to evoke a sense of infinite void to overall aspire as a realm for spiritual journey and immortality. Composition No. 79 represents the joining of the artist's spiritual vision with the elements of the natural world, and provides a revelation of the philosophy of Chuangtze and his view of a universe in which mankind exists in harmony with nature. The poets of China have always sought to place themselves within nature, ingeniously finding the counterparts of their experiences and ideals within the external environment. In addition to being a work in which the artist forged the ideals of poetry and painting into a unified whole, Chu projects into it all his awareness of life and its ordeals and his feelings for his home, creating a work that extends the tradition of Chinese humanism within the abstract painting genre.