Having undertaken training in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy at the China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, in 1955 Chu Teh-Chun received a government scholarship to study fine arts in France, where he soon became enthralled by the European art scene and its styles, and particularly that of the abstract landscape painter Nicolas de Staël. Thus began a practice that spanned six decades and two continents, and was a fundamental part of the Chinese modernist movement in France, made famous by the so-called “three musketeers”—Chu, Wu Guanzhong, and Zao Wou-ki. Nearly three and a half years after the artist’s death in 2014—following a lifetime of accolades, including membership of the Académie de Beaux-Arts and the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur—London’s Waddington Custot gallery has mounted an extensive exhibition of 45 works on paper taken from various private collections, presenting examples of the artist’s creations in calligraphy, gouache, oil and ink.

With his immersion in French painting styles in the 1950s, Chu developed a practice that synthesized his new influences with existing ones, mining the techniques of traditional Chinese painting and forging novel paths to abstraction. Nonetheless, a recognizably calligraphic aesthetic continued to hold a place in his work, and returned to prominence toward the end of his career in a series of untitled cursive creations of china ink on Kraft paper, transcribing the poems of Li Yu (937–978), Su Shi (1037–1101) and a more modern example, Ba Jin (1904–2005). All of the works on display could be located somewhere between traditional-looking calligraphy and abstract landscapes whose brushwork is still inflected by Chu’s training in China. A number of pieces from the 1990s also succeeded in keeping both sets of traits discernable while achieving a distinctive visual effect. Long ink-on-paper paintings, such as two untitled works from 1995 and 1997, retain the linearly directed energy of the artist’s long-held technique, but allow those lines to cluster in knots of lively activity, allowing a focus on the remnant dynamism of each stroke, but also on larger compositions where control is yielded somewhat to the unpredictably absorbent surface of the paper. Where this happens, diffused forms emerge like the aftermath of explosions, with sharp lines dissolving into plumes, while comparatively vibrant splashes of color draw the eye to create illusions of space among the streaks of black on white.