PROVENANCE:

Madame Legendre, Boulogne-Billancourt, France

By 1960, Chu Teh-chun had established his reputation in Paris. As a representative of the Far East artists, he entered the international art exhibition of "Ecole de Paris" held by Galerie Charpentier, and his talent was fully recognized in that exhibition. His paintings late in 1950 were full of strength and were painted with calligraphic lines and color patches of red, green, blue and black. The paintings reflect the profound impact on Chu of the abstract painter de Staël. In the 1960s, Chu Teh-chun's oil paintings were mostly landscapes of single-color background with clouds surrounding mountains and mist around trees. This poetic and artistic scenery conception derives from Chinese mountain-water paintings. Several art critics pointed out that Chu Teh-chun's paintings were the combination of poetry and scenery. Jean-François Chabrun, the poet, writer and art critic, praised Chu Teh-chun as a "Peintre Song du XXe siècle (20th Century Song Painter)" in "L'Express" in 1960.

The painting "No. 167" painted in 1964 was Chu Teh-chun's 167th abstract painting. Abstract painters usually leave their works without a title to avoid preconceived understandings of their art. They give their compositions numbers or dates of creation. From 1958-59, Chu Teh-chun gave his oil paintings numbers and French names. Then later, he simply omitted titles and replaced them entirely with numbers. Around 1970 he found himself puzzled by so many numbers, so he started to use poetic titles since, after all, poetic verses were also abstract. He believed poetic names wouldn't obstruct viewers' freedom of understanding. On the contrary, a good title may help viewers to get closer to the atmosphere which he as a painter had tried to create.

A change in style of the gallery agency in 1962 brought about a low point for Chu Teh-chun for some years. This is a forgettable period for Chu in Paris. A difficult life and low income, however, never influenced his work as a pure-hearted and clear-minded painter. His paintings in the 1960s were less in quantity, but greatly superior in quality.