An undeniable master of Modern Chinese art, Chu Teh-chun developed his effervescent abstractions in the early 1960s. Continually refining and honing his singular aesthetic, Chu reached a new level of artistic freedom with his stunningly serene explorations of form and color in recent decades. Expanding on the visually arresting artistic language which has earned him a position as one of the most preeminent Modern Chinese artists, Chu’s compositions from the past decade demonstrate the artist’s unmatched elegance of expression which characterized his illustrious career. Continually seeking new means for merging the seemingly diametrically opposed influences of Chinese traditional painting with Western modern abstract expressionist movements, Chu Teh-chun found harmony in exploring the aesthetic ideals of both abstraction and traditional Chinese sentiment and expression.

Uniting contrasting aesthetic influences, Chu Teh-chun has made the melding of tradition with modernity the cornerstone of his artistic development. While creating compositions with a distinctly Western approach to abstraction, the artist has continually enhanced his works with the augmentation of elements inspired by traditional Chinese brush and landscape painting. While outwardly divergent in style, Chu Teh-chun believes the two influences share an underlying essence, arguing, “Chinese painting has much in common with Western abstract painting. Actually, traditional Chinese painting has already developed its own kind of abstract style.” Chu saw the intentions of Chinese literati painters as capturing the flow of energies within nature and landscape, rather than depicting the realism of a scene, aligning the aesthetic objectives of the literati with modern expressionist painters. Taking his inspiration not only from the simple stylistic formality of this traditional cultural influence, Chu blended these ideals with European modernist movements and aesthetics. From a deeper spiritual connection as well as his own memories of landscapes and beauty, Chu elevates each aesthetic influence by accentuating the individual inherent qualities in an elegant amalgamation of style and form.

“Chinese paintings are more implicit and poetic,” states Chu, and it is this sense of tacit and embedded meaning that the artist seeks to express through his abstractions. By introducing traditional Chinese ink brush painting techniques to compositions inspired by colorful Fauvism and Expressionist form, Chu’s works establish a harmonious blend of contrasting dualities. Lumière éternelle, an immense diptych completed in the last decade, demonstrates this intermingling of influences by incorporating bold colors and an Abstract Expressionist form with the fluidity of calligraphic brush strokes. In this piece, the artist transforms the viscous oil paints to achieve a similar texture to the “six graded colors”—black, white, dark, light, dry, and wet—of traditional ink-wash technique. This mastery in rendering the oils to control the weight of the paint and application of color creates sweeps of ethereal lightness across the dark deposits of blackened brown. Deep shadows form depth and dimension across the two panels, establishing a landscape intense in complexity. As the gentle swaths of airy white spread from the contrasting darkness of the rich background, Chu creates a sense of overwhelming expanse, the sense of space extending beyond the confines of the canvas. Pools of molten golden light emanate vibrantly from the darkened depths of the shadowed expanse, while colors dance across spectrum of illumination. The stunning jewel tones shine vibrantly out from the darkness, blazing across the center of the combined composition in an exultant celebration of color. Each vivid deposit of color creates a new layer of depth and dimension, adding to the visual representation of the infinite within the present lot. When creating these powerful compositions, Chu explains, “It doesn’t matter whether my creative urge is stimulated by the beautiful sights I’ve seen, or old memories and emotions that well up inside of me, as long as I’m in front of the canvas, my sensitivity will be kindled.” It is this sensitivity and underlying emotion which radiates from Lumière éternelle. Such a sense of subtle yet penetrating insight, clearly demonstrated in works such as the current lot, has elevated Chu Teh-chun to his position of eminence within Modern Chinese art.

The creation of such a rich landscape from abstract forms stems from Chu Teh-chun’s masterful amalgamation of Western abstraction with the spirit and intention of traditional Chinese landscapes. As the artist himself explains, “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.” The present lot, Lumière éternelle, embodies this sense of reaching beyond accepted forms in presenting a standard conception of a landscape, and expanding the aesthetic lexicon with which an artist constructs a scene which is at once idealistic and universal.