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Lot Essay
Chu Teh-Chun once acknowledged classical Chinese landscape painting as a major influence on his work, noting that he particularly admired the imposing style and lively manner of the 10th-century painter Fan Kuan. He added, "Fan Kuan has said that 'learning from nature is better than learning from man, and the human heart is an ever greater source for learning than nature.' What he meant by that was that he considered the painter dominant, and that there was already a concept of abstraction. The Chinese people just didn't use the term 'abstraction,' that's all. Nature is absorbed into the artist's thought and then undergoes refinement, and it is the power of the artist's imagination, his sensibility, and his inner character that are revealed on the canvas. This is where the concepts behind Chinese painting and abstract painting very neatly come together."
Gerard Xuriguera once commented on Chu Teh-Chun's painting in 1982, he thinks his work reveals a deep harmony with the conflicting powers ruling the universe, as he strikes the perfect balance between the East and West, the "inner mindscape" and the "outer landscape". Of all of China's ancient painters, he most admired the large-scale landscapes of Fan Kuan. Strictly speaking, Fan Kuan's vivid presence of the forested mountains, valleys, and rivers is barely visible in Chu's work in the 1980s, as he has shifted his focus from the representational to the presentational in the state of 'imaginative analogy" (Xurigera, Cinmaise, issue 159, 1982). The pictorial grains of mountains and trees from Fan Kuan's Sitting Alone by a Stream could still be faintly perceived in ?lots noy?s de brume (Drowned Islands Mist) (Lot 3349), created in 1982. Paying an homage to Fan, Chu transformed the cracked grain as seen in the rocks from ink-wash painting into the texture strokes and washes in his abstract landscape. Visualizing a dynamic vigor in a void, Chu's brushstrokes flow around the canvas, carpeting it with currents of paints as lively as streaming rivers and scudding clouds. Lines roll out wildly, leaping onto the surface in tandem with indistinct color blocks and dotted pigments, reminiscent of Zhang Daqian's Lake Aachen.
For Chu, 1980s was a decade of free artistic expression. He employed large washes of colour and sweeping, striated brushstrokes with even greater skill while his colour became richer and more brilliant, with larger areas of high-intensity hues. Chu always pays meticulous attention to colour and linear arrangements in his composition. Nothing ever happens by chance, no matter how deliberate the appearance may be. Chu's Pluralit? (Plurality)(Lot 3353) takes green-yellow as its basic palette in an imposing and magnificent composition built up from layering and tonal juxtaposition, leading us into an magnificent landscape in Xu Daoning, Fishermen's Evening Song (Fig. 1); the silent and mysterious world at the sea floor and the continuous pulsing of rolling waves appear before our eyes, a shimmering light reflecting from its waves and casting its varied colours throughout that world.
Gerard Xuriguera once commented on Chu Teh-Chun's painting in 1982, he thinks his work reveals a deep harmony with the conflicting powers ruling the universe, as he strikes the perfect balance between the East and West, the "inner mindscape" and the "outer landscape". Of all of China's ancient painters, he most admired the large-scale landscapes of Fan Kuan. Strictly speaking, Fan Kuan's vivid presence of the forested mountains, valleys, and rivers is barely visible in Chu's work in the 1980s, as he has shifted his focus from the representational to the presentational in the state of 'imaginative analogy" (Xurigera, Cinmaise, issue 159, 1982). The pictorial grains of mountains and trees from Fan Kuan's Sitting Alone by a Stream could still be faintly perceived in ?lots noy?s de brume (Drowned Islands Mist) (Lot 3349), created in 1982. Paying an homage to Fan, Chu transformed the cracked grain as seen in the rocks from ink-wash painting into the texture strokes and washes in his abstract landscape. Visualizing a dynamic vigor in a void, Chu's brushstrokes flow around the canvas, carpeting it with currents of paints as lively as streaming rivers and scudding clouds. Lines roll out wildly, leaping onto the surface in tandem with indistinct color blocks and dotted pigments, reminiscent of Zhang Daqian's Lake Aachen.
For Chu, 1980s was a decade of free artistic expression. He employed large washes of colour and sweeping, striated brushstrokes with even greater skill while his colour became richer and more brilliant, with larger areas of high-intensity hues. Chu always pays meticulous attention to colour and linear arrangements in his composition. Nothing ever happens by chance, no matter how deliberate the appearance may be. Chu's Pluralit? (Plurality)(Lot 3353) takes green-yellow as its basic palette in an imposing and magnificent composition built up from layering and tonal juxtaposition, leading us into an magnificent landscape in Xu Daoning, Fishermen's Evening Song (Fig. 1); the silent and mysterious world at the sea floor and the continuous pulsing of rolling waves appear before our eyes, a shimmering light reflecting from its waves and casting its varied colours throughout that world.