CHU TEH-CHUN

(1920-2014)

Chu Teh-Chun was born in China's Anhui (formerly Jiangsu) province in 1920. His father and grandfather were traditional doctors who collected Chinese paintings. Chu learned calligraphy and classical Chinese poetry at an early age. At the age of 15, in 1935, he entered the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where his teaching was considered avant-garde. His teachers, including his director, the painter Lin Fengmian, had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the time, Paris was one of the hotbeds of modernism. Chu discovered both Western painting techniques and traditional Chinese painting.

In 1937, at the start of the Sino-Japanese war, Chu left Hangzhou, with the Academy of Fine Arts, for Chongqing in the west, which temporarily became the capital and concentrated intellectuals, universities and colleges. Chu graduated in 1941. He became assistant professor at the National Academy of Fine Arts, which at the time united the Peking and Hangzhou academies. Chu's painting was influenced by Paul Cézanne, André Derain andHenri Matisse.

In 1949, a few months after the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, Chu, his wife Liu and their daughter Kate moved to Taipei. Chu teaches Western painting at the National Taiwan Normal University. The success of his first solo exhibition in Taipei in 1954 enabled him to finance his first years in Paris, starting in the spring of 1955. The discovery of Nicolas de Staël's paintings in the 1956 retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne marked a turning point in Chu's work, shifting his focus from figuration to abstraction. Abstract painting then dominated the international art scene, along with informal art in Europe and abstract expressionism in the United States. In France, these were the beginnings of Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung and Georges Mathieu, while on the other side of the Atlantic, we can cite Mark Rothko and Franz Kline, for example. Chu quickly turned away from the impasto of Nicolas de Staël's painting. He did, however, find his way to abstraction.

The uniqueness of his painting lies in its dual Far Eastern and Western origins. Indeed, Chu's work is nourished by the traditions of Chinese painting and calligraphy, as well as those of Western painting. Depth, the effects of transparency, blur and vibration, colors divided between light and shadow, an inner gesturality that seems to come from different times and feelings are all aspects that characterize his language. The artist's inspiration remains closely linked to nature and landscapes, particularly those of China.

After several years under contract to the Legendre gallery in Paris, in 1965 he chose to remain independent. In 1969, he represented China at the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil.

In the 1970s, he returned to calligraphy, one of the fundamentals of Chinese culture practiced in his youth.

He went to China in 1983, invited as a juror by the University of Hong Kong and then by the Chinese Artists' Association. He hadn't been back for 35 years. He travels to the Yellow Mountains, an age-old subject of Chinese painting, and one that inspires him greatly. The mid-1980s ushered in the creation of huge paintings.

In 1985, the observation of a snowstorm in Geneva inspired him to create a cycle of Neiges covered with a spray of white paint drops. These drippings and their large formats are reminiscent of Pollock's.

He was invited to Taiwan in 1986. The following year, the National History Museum in Taipei devoted a first retrospective to his work. This was followed by a touring exhibition in 1988 and 1989.

At the beginning of the following decade, he moved into a house in Vitry-sur-Seine, where he had a vast studio in which to produce his very large-scale paintings. Exhibitions followed one another in France, Europe and Taiwan.

Pierre Cabanne wrote a monograph devoted to his work, published in 1993 by Cercle d'art. Chu travelled again to China in 1994, first to Beijing, then to the discovery of new landscapes that were to nourish his inspiration. Exhibitions followed in Europe, China and Taiwan. In recognition of his work, Chu was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in December 1997. He was the first member of Chinese origin to be elected.

 In 2002, the Shanghai Opera commissioned a large-scale decoration. Symphonie festive, was presented at the Opéra Garnier in Paris before leaving for Shanghai, where it was inaugurated at the end of August 2003. Between 2007 and 2009, Chu began a collaboration with the Manufacture national de Céramique de Sèvres, at the latter's invitation. Chu decorates 56 porcelain vases based on the SR 22 model created by Émile Decœur in the ^20th century.

Extending the encounter between the savoir-faire of the great French tradition and contemporary art, many other artists have also indulged in the exercise, including Pierre Alechinsky, Zao Wou-Ki, Pierre Soulages, Lee Ufan, Giuseppe Penone, Olivier Debré and others. For the vast majority of vases, Chu limits his palette to porcelain white, cobalt blue and pure gold. The choice of these three colors refers to historical porcelain - the blue and white of millennia-old Chinese porcelain, the gold of the European courts - while the decoration of the vases is entirely contemporary. The 56 vases are presented in Paris at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet: De neige, d'or et d'azur. Chu Teh-Chun et la manufacture de Sèvres, summer 2009.

The artist passed away in March 2014.

A major retrospective was held in Venice at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in spring 2024, Chu Teh-Chun, In Nebula.