PROVENANCE:

"Nature will forever remain my mother." Chu Teh-chun once told his friends. Mother Nature has always been the muse for all artists of Chinese brush painting or Western landscape painting. Paradoxically, while the artistry of the two schools may be similar, it is also different. The creation of an unique artistic style is the goal pursued by most artists, and Chu is well on his way toward achieving this distinction.

In the 1950s, Chu often sketched the mountains in Central Taiwan and the artistic bravura of Chu's ink-wash landscape imagery evokes these earlier experiences. He combines the abstract aestheticism of the poet Wang Wei from the Tang Dynasty, incarnated as "Poetry in Painting and Painting in Poetry". Landscape used to be the background of a tableau in the history of painting, before the British watercolor master William Turner and the pioneers of Impressionism, Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet started capturing the nebulous changes on canvas. They enriched the content of paintings and yet nature still retained a subordinate role in such paintings. The work of nature charged with the force of nature itself, the ultimate source of Chu's abstraction, lead us to the recognition that he is a bridge between the rich history of Chinese aesthetics and the world of advanced Modernism. Nevertheless, the power of brush and coloring effects both embody the charms of nature, so that the landscape has inally come to play the leading role on the canvas.

In 1985 he once flew over the Alps and when he saw the snowy scenery, the poetry of Li Po and Tu Fu suddenly appeared in his mind. The mysterious and atmospheric beauty of nature inspired him and new abstract ideas lead us to his famous and poetic "Snow Scenes Series" created from 1985 to 1989.

Landscape should not only entail types of scenery, but also the feelings related to nature that viewers should have as they become immersed in, and part of, the painting contents. The richly textured composition leshed out the atmosphere; as Chu said, "My landscape is an experience in nature; not a duplicate of nature". This is a splendid response to the classical Greek view of art as "mimesis" or imitation of nature. Viewers should be inspired by the images of nature in the paintings. His work unequivocally resonates with Taoist thoughts; the free imagination conveys his sublime passion in the synthesis of the concrete and the abstract.

Chu was well trained by Pan Tian Shou, the contemporary master artist from Hangzhou National Academy of Art. As his direct disciple, Chu specialized in Chinese brush paintings for landscape, flowers/birds, poetry, calligraphy and seal cutting. He loves poems and is a great calligrapher. Chinese characters are artistic abstractions and provide inspiration to western abstract artists. His talent for poetry and brush painting lead us to his use of vivid and dramatic strokes, in a kind of marriage of the visual and the powerful, form and effect.

Chu recalled, "... after staying in Paris for awhile, I started missing Chinese paintings and calligraphy which may be the pioneers of the abstract. The concept is quite similar. Format is not required but rather similarity. Literary arts always focus on scenery and the diversity of wash-ink. However, the aesthetic factors are what the artist of abstraction is looking for, i.e. lines, colors and compositions. The landscape portrayed in Chinese paintings is no longer merely the landscape portrayed in reality; the distance between the actuality and the imagination is the realm of the abstraction. Chinese people do not speak of abstraction but rather paint the abstraction." (Artist Magazine Page 70 regarding Chu Teh-chun's Album.)

Since 1985 Chu started his series of "Snow Scenes Series" and most representative works were made in 1987. For instance "La forêt blanche", "Temps d'hiver", "Présence hivernale"and this "Cold" all large-scale paintings. A solo exhibition was held by the Taipei National Museum of History in the same year; 32 years had passed after his departure from Taiwan. Exhibitions were also held in different art galleries. As one of the important artists of France, he was invited to participate in Panorama de l'Ecole Francaise Contemporaine in Israel.

When he was in Taiwan for an art forum in 1986, his inspiration was derived from Chinese paintings in the Song Dynasty. He had his student Sung Lung-fei ask for the approval of Chin Hsiao-yi, director of the National Palace Museum to view the grandeur of such masterpieces as: "Travelers among Mountains and Stream" by Fan Kuan, "Early Spring" by Kuo His and "Wind in Pines among a Myriad Valleys" by Li Tang; he was accompanied by his classmate Li Lin-tsan from Hangzhou National Art College.

With its free style brush strokes, pieces and dots being dimly visible, noises all around bouncing through space, sleek lines falling and forming into nets, it all nestles into a silverish grey world. Painting according to his whims and desires, the painter painted diversiied, varied, surreal, dreams, happiness and anger looming..., this all equates to the luck and sorrow in one's life experience, a gauze that breaks through the innermost feelings, showcasing path and marks in the author's long artistic life.

A further example of the concept of running and cursive script calligraphy is seen in this "Froidure". By employing automatism, to capture the unconscious or instinctive forces, a certain dramatic vigor appeared on his canvas. The variety of calligraphy is like the capricious nature of abstraction itself. The description of the heading will not conine the unrestrained imagination of the viewers. "Froidure" in French means "cold", an ancient name of winter. The confident strokes of the artist are flying freely, like the snow itself, in the silver- grey world. His work is rendered with great harmony and rhythm, more traditionally associated with poetry and music. Rapidly executed lines and robust brushstrokes combine to form a style that is hyperbolic and at the same time lyrical. The play of light and dark, the resulting spacious atmosphere, the pronounced horizontality of the painting and the winter landscape imagery relect a bravura that only powerful art evokes. His paintings combine the essence of Chinese aesthetics handed down through generations with abstract concepts. Simplified pictorial elements, smooth flowing lines and bold color schemes together create an irresistible aesthetic impact and endless visual tension. His work is a recreated, or resurrected, painting of Fan Kuan.