In 1956, CHU Teh-Chun freed himself from figurative expression and turned towards abstraction.

For CHU Teh-Chun, the Paris retrospective of Nicolas de Staël in 1956 was a liberating shock towards abstraction.

« After arriving in France in 1955, Chu Teh-Chun could not help but make these upheavals his own. The discovery of Nicolas de Staël’s work, in 1956, was to prove decisive in his questioning and torment. He saw in it the possible path of a painting in which abstraction was intimately linked to reality. We know that Nicolas de Staël’s paintings, with their powerful aesthetic and emotional effects, always bear a title referring to a concrete subject: The Concert, The Footballers, Studio Corner, Portrait of Anne, Landscape (Antibes), and so on. Abstract figurative, It was under this label, formulated by specialists of the Russian-born painter, that the painter from faraway China pursued his own creation.

The choice of this artistic path, however, was only the beginning of a long process of research and deepening before the artist was able to achieve a vision of his own, and from there to forge a specific and effective language to express it. »

François Cheng, extract from “Pour saluer CHU Teh-Chun” – 2020.