An originator of the "Blue School", Chua Hu has enjoyed a high degree of recognition in Europe and America for the past several decades. The overseas Chinese painter, although largely forgotten in Taiwan, holds extraordinary achievements as a recipient of a number of prestigious awards and distinctions from around the world: the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England, 1979; Membre-Correspondant at the Acad?ie Europ?nne des Sciences des Art et des Lettres, 1980; a Medal for Peace from the Albert Einstein International Academy Foundation, 1990; and the Twentieth Century Award for Achievement from the International Biographical Centre, 1990. The late Taiwanese painter Max Liu has also praised Chua Hu, whose achievements are rare indeed among painters in Taiwan.

Originally from Jinjiang, Fujian Province, Chua Hu fled to the Philippines at the age of 10 to escape the war. There he studied traditional Chinese ink-and-wash paintings under the tutelage of a painter well-known in Southeast Asia, Yang Geng-tang. In 1950, Chua Hu studied western painting at the College of Fine Arts in Manila, where he stood out as a painter, and went on to win the Gold Prize at the 11th Annual Awards at the Art Association of the Philippines. In earlier years, Chua Hu held close ties with Taiwan artists, including Zao Wu-ki and Chu Teh-chun, both of whom are now based in Paris. Chua Hu's earlier work was influenced by Fauvism, but in 1971, his work started to drift from a decorative style to more abstract paintings filled with blue and white tones. This auction piece, Iron Bridges in the Harbor, is a representative work from this period. The renowned Taiwanese art critic Ho Kung-shang wrote an introductory piece for a Taiwan exhibition by the artist in 1971, in which he expressed particular affection for the Iron Bridges in the Harbor series: "...with strong and powerful strokes, Chua Hu uses black, blue, and white hues to form rich layers of colour: black provides the framework, while blue dominates tonally, and white provides a harmonizing effect. He does not like to use many colours, not even for touching up the overall appearance of a work. The structure of his paintings uses many types of recurring symbols, which are clear and easy to see. He paints for himself he has never painted to cater to a particular market or other people. I especially like how he used the harbor as the subject of these paintings, and how the rich blue hues of that painting emerge from the black to appreciate his use of black is not to become intoxicated by it, but rather to let it inspire contemplation..."

(cf. Ho Kung-shang, 'Life in Strokes of Color- Written for An Album of Paintings by Chua Hu', Arts Publishing, Taipei, 1971)