999 - CHU TEH CHUN (1920–2014)

CHU TEH CHUN (1920–2014) Composition No. 12 – 1959 Gouache on paper Signed upper left. Signed and dated on the reverse 57 x 37.5 cm Certificate from the Chu Teh Chun Foundation dated July 15, 2026 Provenance: Estate in the South of France Note: Created in 1959, this gouache belongs to a pivotal period in Chu Teh-Chun’s career. Having settled in Paris in 1955, the artist had just begun to gradually move away from figurative art under the influence of his discovery of the work of Nicolas de Staël. Between 1958 and the early 1960s, he developed a personal artistic language that blended Chinese pictorial tradition with Western lyrical abstraction. The works on paper from this period constitute an essential laboratory for his artistic exploration. Gouache allowed him to spontaneously explore the relationships between light, space, and movement. Forms emerge through fluid brushstrokes and calligraphic rhythms, while the composition retains the spirit and breath of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Already, Chu was no longer seeking to represent nature but to convey its inner energy and atmospheric phenomena. The year 1959 also marked the artist’s first successes in Paris, following his first solo exhibition in 1958. His abstract vocabulary then asserted itself with a newfound freedom: signs, masses of color, and transparencies combine to create a poetic space where East and West converge. This gouache thus bears witness to one of the most sought-after phases of Chu Teh-Chun’s career—the development of his personal abstract language, which would lead him, a few years later, to international recognition.