Chu Teh-Chun (1920-2014)
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Chinese visual artist Chu Teh-Chun created a unique style that linked painting with poetry—the spoken and written word with the beauty of the landscape. He was admired for his inventive style and wide range of artistic abilities for creating large-scale paintings, ceramic pieces, graphics, diptychs, and triptychs. He became a well-known and respected abstract painter after moving to and establishing himself in France, where he created his most seminal works with rich colors, light and dark contrasts, and the incorporation of calligraphy. The artist prided himself in painting works that could be cherished and understood by all. He sought to put a piece of his soul into every work and did not feel the need to explain the meanings of his works beyond the fact they were created from feelings deep within him. He said, “The marvelous lies in the inexplicable.”
Chu Teh-Chun was born in 1920 in the town of Baitu, Jiangsu Province (now a part of Anhui Province), China. At age fifteen he was admitted to the National School of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou, where he initially showed interest in learning traditional Chinese techniques, however he chose to focus on Western painting styles. He was fortunate to have distinguished Chinese artists as professors, such as Pan Tianshou and Wu Dayu, who instructed him in Chinese painting and Western art, respectively. Two of Teh-Chun’s classmates, and fellow modernist Chinese painters, were Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki. Art historians refer to this trio as the “Three Musketeers” of their painting style since they all attended school in China and France and shared other accomplishments, such as election as members to the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France and pioneered efforts to promote modernist art in the 1950s. After graduating in 1941 and in light of the events of the Sino-Japanese War, The-Chun, along with many of his art teachers and fellow students, had to move farther west in China to avoid conflict. He was able to move to Taipei, Taiwan in 1949 in the wake of the Communist victory in Mainland China and obtain a job teaching Western style art at the National Taiwan Normal University, a position he held for fifteen years. His first one-man show was held at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei in 1954. In 1955 he moved to Paris and the following year he entered and won the Silver Prize at the Paris Spring Salon for a portrait of his wife Tung Ching-Chao. Guanzhong dubbed the painting the “Mona Lisa of the East” and Teh-Chun’s name spread after receipt of this award.
Life and study in France, as well as exposure to famous works housed in the Louvre, caused The-Chun to shift to a more Western style. He first experimented with painting the French landscape and then moved on to abstract techniques, new color combinations, and a complete abandonment of figures and increasingly unrestrained brushstrokes, in part due to a visit to an exhibition of the works of Nicolas de Stäel. He also admired the works of Monet, Cézanne, and Henri Matisse. As Teh-Chun gained recognition in France as well as on the international scene, he was invited to participate in international competition and expositions, such as the International Modern Graphic Exposition held in 1964 at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the 1969 São Paulo Biennial, and other shows in Jerusalem and Athens. During the 1970s, Teh-Chun connected with his Chinese roots by again practicing calligraphy, which he learned in his youth, and including elements of this traditional Chinese style in his paintings. Teh-Chun became a French citizen in 1980, held another solo exhibition of the entirety of his work at the National Museum of History in Taipei in 1987, and was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts of the Institute of Paris in 1997. Teh-Chun continued to live and work in Paris until his death at age 93 on March 26, 2014, not long after the deaths of his friends and the other two “Musketeers”, Wu Guanzhong (2010) and Zao Wou-Ki (2013). When Teh-Chun, the last “Musketeer” passed, art historians labeled his death the end of an era.
Teh-Chun’s works have been featured temporarily and permanently in over fifty galleries and museums around the world, including the Marlborough Gallery and the Danzinger Gallery in New York, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Guimet Museum of Asian Art in Paris, and the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Many of Teh-Chun’s works have sold for large sums at auction, including Untitled (1963; oil on canvas, diptych) in 2013 for over $9 million and Vertige Neigeux (oil on canvas, diptych). Only two Chinese artists have outsold Teh-Chun at public auction—Zeng Fanzhi and Fan Zeng—as Teh-Chun’s works have brought in approximately $65 million (Huran Art List). According to Teh-Chun, his best work was The Aura of Revival (oil). He donated this painting to the Shanghai Grand Theater in 2003 in celebration of the theater’s fifth anniversary where it was temporarily on display in the lobby.
A partial list of his public collections is as follows:
Shanghai Museum of Art (Shanghai, China)
Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, China)
Musée Cernuschi (Paris, France)
Bibliothéque Nationale (Paris, France)
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (Paris, France)
Maison de la Culture de la Société des Eaux (Marseilles, France)
National Library (Bogotá, Colombia)
Chu Teh-Chun was born in 1920 in the town of Baitu, Jiangsu Province (now a part of Anhui Province), China. At age fifteen he was admitted to the National School of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou, where he initially showed interest in learning traditional Chinese techniques, however he chose to focus on Western painting styles. He was fortunate to have distinguished Chinese artists as professors, such as Pan Tianshou and Wu Dayu, who instructed him in Chinese painting and Western art, respectively. Two of Teh-Chun’s classmates, and fellow modernist Chinese painters, were Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki. Art historians refer to this trio as the “Three Musketeers” of their painting style since they all attended school in China and France and shared other accomplishments, such as election as members to the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France and pioneered efforts to promote modernist art in the 1950s. After graduating in 1941 and in light of the events of the Sino-Japanese War, The-Chun, along with many of his art teachers and fellow students, had to move farther west in China to avoid conflict. He was able to move to Taipei, Taiwan in 1949 in the wake of the Communist victory in Mainland China and obtain a job teaching Western style art at the National Taiwan Normal University, a position he held for fifteen years. His first one-man show was held at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei in 1954. In 1955 he moved to Paris and the following year he entered and won the Silver Prize at the Paris Spring Salon for a portrait of his wife Tung Ching-Chao. Guanzhong dubbed the painting the “Mona Lisa of the East” and Teh-Chun’s name spread after receipt of this award.
Life and study in France, as well as exposure to famous works housed in the Louvre, caused The-Chun to shift to a more Western style. He first experimented with painting the French landscape and then moved on to abstract techniques, new color combinations, and a complete abandonment of figures and increasingly unrestrained brushstrokes, in part due to a visit to an exhibition of the works of Nicolas de Stäel. He also admired the works of Monet, Cézanne, and Henri Matisse. As Teh-Chun gained recognition in France as well as on the international scene, he was invited to participate in international competition and expositions, such as the International Modern Graphic Exposition held in 1964 at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the 1969 São Paulo Biennial, and other shows in Jerusalem and Athens. During the 1970s, Teh-Chun connected with his Chinese roots by again practicing calligraphy, which he learned in his youth, and including elements of this traditional Chinese style in his paintings. Teh-Chun became a French citizen in 1980, held another solo exhibition of the entirety of his work at the National Museum of History in Taipei in 1987, and was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts of the Institute of Paris in 1997. Teh-Chun continued to live and work in Paris until his death at age 93 on March 26, 2014, not long after the deaths of his friends and the other two “Musketeers”, Wu Guanzhong (2010) and Zao Wou-Ki (2013). When Teh-Chun, the last “Musketeer” passed, art historians labeled his death the end of an era.
Teh-Chun’s works have been featured temporarily and permanently in over fifty galleries and museums around the world, including the Marlborough Gallery and the Danzinger Gallery in New York, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Guimet Museum of Asian Art in Paris, and the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Many of Teh-Chun’s works have sold for large sums at auction, including Untitled (1963; oil on canvas, diptych) in 2013 for over $9 million and Vertige Neigeux (oil on canvas, diptych). Only two Chinese artists have outsold Teh-Chun at public auction—Zeng Fanzhi and Fan Zeng—as Teh-Chun’s works have brought in approximately $65 million (Huran Art List). According to Teh-Chun, his best work was The Aura of Revival (oil). He donated this painting to the Shanghai Grand Theater in 2003 in celebration of the theater’s fifth anniversary where it was temporarily on display in the lobby.
A partial list of his public collections is as follows:
Shanghai Museum of Art (Shanghai, China)
Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, China)
Musée Cernuschi (Paris, France)
Bibliothéque Nationale (Paris, France)
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (Paris, France)
Maison de la Culture de la Société des Eaux (Marseilles, France)
National Library (Bogotá, Colombia)