The art of Chu Teh-Chun was introduced to us by one of our Corona Del Mar clients and friends. Chu Teh-Chun produces abstract statement art that is desired by many worldwide including the rich and famous. Here is the readers digest version of Chu Teh-Chun.
Chu grew up in Xiao County in the eastern province of Anhui, a region stretching hundreds of miles north of the Yangtze River, and home to the famous Yellow Mountain. Its conifers clinging to jagged, near vertical cliffs and cloudy peaks were the subject of many of his classical paintings and poems.
Chu’s grandfather collected art and poetry, and it was through the family’s extensive art collection that Chu educated himself in the history of traditional calligraphy and ink painting.
When Chu’s father recognized his sons talent for painting, he persuaded him to studying art at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou rather than persue gymnastics.
The head of the school’s was Lin Fengmian, a visionary artist with an expansionist Pan-Asian aesthetic who wanted to merge Chinese traditional art with Western Modernism. It was here that Chu also met the artists Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki, and together they would advance Lin’s desire for a Chinese modernism.
As a teenager Chu studied with the modern ink master Pan Tianshou and learned how to perfect the exacting craft of caoshu, a form of calligraphy in which the characters are written in one uninterrupted stroke.
Since listening to his teacher Lin Fengmian describing his student days in Paris, Chu had wanted to study in the French capital. In 1955, after several years as a successful artist, he got his wish. He did not take long to make his mark: in 1956, Chu was awarded the silver medal in the Spring Salon for a painting of his wife, Tang Teh-Chun. The picture was nicknamed the ‘Mona Lisa of the East’.
