Gouache and oil on paper

35.5 × 50 cm. 14 × 19 5/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and English and dated on bottom right
PROVENANCE
Received as a gift directly from the artist by Sacha and Paulette Klerx, France
Important Private Collection, Asia

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued and signed by Mrs. Ching-Chao Chu, spouse of the artist and co-editor of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Chu Teh-Chun

Note: This work will be included in the artist's forthcoming catalogue raisonné being co-edited by Foundation Chu Teh-Chun and Mrs. Ching-Chao Chu

Magnificent Tour of the world, Poem Recited from the Painting
The Masterpiece of Chu Teh-Chun The Shadow on the Pond Tells Emptiness

In 1955, 35-year-old Chu Teh-Chun boarded the Vietnam cruise ship to France from the Victoria Harbor in HK, ushering him into the “golden time” of his artistic career. Thirty years later, he set foot in Hong Kong again, after he gamed fame. He selected 30 pieces of his work and held his first solo exhibition in Asia after traveling to France. He also invited Lin Fengmian, his mentor who lived in Hong Kong at the time, to see his show. Lin Fengmian inscribed the cover of his exhibition album, which demonstrated the special status of this exhibition in his artistic career. These thirty pieces fully exhibited Chu Teh-Chun's artistic characteristics of his mature period in the 1980s. The Shadow on the Pond Tells Emptiness (Lot 51) was one of his most representative pieces.

All You See Beyond The Hands Of Nature

While at Paris, Chu Teh-Chun met Klerx upon his first arrival in France, who was the artistic director of the Galerie du Haut-Pavé, Paris at the time. Klerx was the first one who spotted Chu's talent in the French art world who, for certain, owned many collections of Zhu's works. The artwork named Resplendent (Lot 50), completed in 1980, is one of them.
Resplendent, fully embodied the artist's ingenious layout of the space with the combination of point, line and surface. The painting depicted the magnificent scene beyond the creation of nature and expressed the artist's ambition of endless pursuit. He didn't adopt the traditional method of landscape painting that started from the foreground, but taking the centre as the initial point where he unfolded the space and rendered the colours towards the margins to build a scenery where light and shadow met and lines and shapes twisted and turned.

Beautiful Scenery Remains Eternal Regardless Of The Time

In terms of colour, Resplendent highlighted the specific illuminated time with colour, suggesting the rise and fall of the sun and the passage of time with the overall nacarat colour tone. In the left half of the work, to explain the classic theme of “light”, the artist creates the diffusion and direction of warm tone beams by changing the brightness of colour from yellow to orange and from red-brown to burnt ochre. In the right half, he used dark lines and faces to create a combination of calligraphy and landscape. With the rendering of colours and the twisting of brushes, the artwork deduced the understanding of people towards the good time with its light brilliantly enveloping the image and stars shining when time passed by.

The Coexistence Of Yin And Yang Illustrates The Magnificent Scenery Of The Universe

Resplendent does not only insert the idea of Yin and Yang as a pair of opposition to the western aesthetics of colour and light but also indicates the fundamental change of the artists' creative essence since the 1980s. It is another example of the combination of Chinese culture, natural philosophy and humanistic aesthetics.

Price estimate:
HKD: 850,000 – 1,500,000
USD: 109,600 – 193,400

Auction Result:
HKD: 1,003,000