Acrylic and ink on paper fan

17 × 60 cm. 6 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. (扇面); 33 × 61 cm. 13 × 24 in. (含扇骨)

Signed in Chinese and English and dated on bottom left; signed, inscribed and dated in Chinese with three artist’s seals on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

Powerful and Strong, Combining Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting
The Debut of Chu Teh-Chun’s Rare Double-sided Fan 

"The Chinese cultural background has deeply nourished me, and when I paint, it is a kind of unconscious and natural expression."
——Chu Teh-Chun

French-Chinese abstract master Chu Teh-Chun was born in 1920 into a family of Chinese medicine practitioners and was nurtured by his family’s education from an early age. At the age of five, he learnt calligraphy and recited poems in private school, and at the age of fifteen, he entered the Hangzhou National College of Art, where he learnt Western painting from Wu Dayu, and Chinese painting from Pan Tianshou, laying down a good foundation. In 1955, he travelled to France to study, but the realistic academic style did not appeal to him. Instead, Nicolas de Staël, Rembrandt, and Cézanne’s emotionally charged paintings, vibrant light and colours tugged at his heartstrings. Since then, he has transformed the reality of the scene into the main body of his creation with a broad imagination and has merged the content and form with a powerful calligraphic brushstroke. For decades, Chu Teh-Chun was not confined to oil paintings. From the 1960s to the 1970s he developed watercolour and ink on paper, achieving the unity of poetry, calligraphy and painting. In his works, he combines the unrestrained abstraction of the modern era with the elegance of the ancient Chinese literati and the passionate colours of poetry and symphonies.

After 35 years of absence from his homeland, Chu Teh-Chun finally returned to China in 1983, but it was not until 1994 that he had the opportunity to bring his family back to his homeland, a place he had not seen for 57 years, to remember his family and to travel around the country. In that year, he held a touring exhibition of his giant oil paintings in Vitié, Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. His international reputation was at its peak. Abstrait, which was made in 1994, is the only one of Chu Teh-Chun’s double-sided fans ever to appear in the auctions and is extremely rare and precious. The front side is painted in abstract ink and acrylic colour, while on the reverse, the poem Sumuzhe Theme: Reminiscing by the Song Dynasty poet Fan Zhongyan is written in bold cursive, which is a reference to Chu’s feelings of longing for his homeland, and nostalgia of his long-cherished wish.

Boundless Beauty beyond the Imaginary

The Tang Dynasty aesthetician Zhu Jingxuan put forward the concept of "the image beyond an image" in his book On Famous Paintings of the Tang Period, which refers to the infinite universe beyond the visible image. Chu Teh-Chun brings the key to the viewer to enter beyond, bringing the charm of swallowing the eight directions and exploring the four oceans in the rushing colours and lines. On the front of Abstrait, he cleverly makes use of the horizontal extension of fan shapes like a scroll to slowly lead people into a colourful autumn forest. He paints the main trunk, which is so strong that it can hold up the sky, with large strokes in the central area. In the meantime, Chu Teh-Chun also paints the branches and trunks of the trees with his fine brushstrokes, which tell the story of the boundless vitality of the strong old trees from the earth. In the middle of the painting, vermillion red, autumn leaf yellow, ink green, lemon yellow and turquoise colours are splashed among the branches, condensing in the centre of the painting into fruitful fruits, and the gorgeous flying autumn leaves are like notes spattered and danced from the music score, leaping in the forest. His agile and robust brushwork tweaks the viewer’s five senses, arousing the imagination of the senses of hearing and touch; "the image beyond an image" realm under his brushwork does not condense the scenery, but rather depicts the ever-changing forms of nature, which is stirring and forceful!  

Ink that is as Graceful as a Swimming Dragon and Brings Together Emotions

Chu Teh-Chun’s love for Chinese poetry and calligraphy is deep in his soul. When he first arrived in Paris, due to the geographical difference and lack of painting materials, he had put calligraphy on hold for a while. However, in 1966, he happened to obtain a paper that could be used as a substitute for rice paper. He continued to practise daily until his later years. Although he mainly wrote regular script when he was young, he was attracted to Wang Xizhi’s cursive script by chance. The strong abstraction in cursive script, inherited from the nourishment of a thousand years of culture, is in line with the painting mood Chu Teh-Chun pursued. In his art, the essence of Eastern and Western aesthetics is like two streams that climb over thousands of dangers and eventually merge into a vast ocean.

In Abstrait, Chu Teh-Chun wrote the first half of the poem Sumuzhe Theme: Reminiscing. This poem was originally written by Fan Zhongyan when he left his hometown to guard the border in Shaanxi Province, and Chu Teh-Chun was also a traveller returning home when he wrote this poem. He transformed his thousands of feelings into a vigorous cursive style with a controlled flow and wrote this poem in a single breath with a whirlwind-like movement. The exaggerated and variant character forms show the unrestrained character of cursive writing. In the poem, his strong feelings for his homeland are condensed between the lines in a flowing, breathless style, which is touching in both its mood and its melancholy rhyme. Abstrait is a work of literary excellence in which there is a poem in the painting, a painting in the poem. It unites Chu’s high level of achievement in integrating the East and the West in different fields, which is very rare and precious.

Price estimate:
HKD: 250,000 - 350,000
USD: 31,900 - 44,700

Auction Result:
HKD: 420,000