Chu Teh-Chun remains one of the leading exponents of a synthesis between Chinese tradition and Western modernity. Since his formative years, and unlike his peers, Chu Teh-Chun has never lost touch with ink painting, which he seems to have practised continuously. However, for various reasons, this aspect of his work has long been confined to the studio. As a student at the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1930s, the core of his apprenticeship was oil painting, and his attraction to traditional painting was expressed outside the university curriculum. The style inspired by his encounter with non-figurative painting in Paris in the 1950s took the form of oil painting, which remained the painter’s preferred medium. Thus, although ink work continued to nourish Chu Teh-Chun’s work throughout its evolution, it remained in the background for a long time.

His encounter with the work of Nicolas de Staël, which pushed him towards abstraction while retaining the imprint of the landscapes sketched in his country of origin, was a major event in his development. From that moment on, Chu Teh-Chun de nitively turned to abstraction, incorporating de Staël’s at colours and the freedom of gesture of Hartung and Soulages into his artistic vocabulary. Nevertheless, his modulations of ink and the marks around the concentric dots are reminiscent of traditional landscapes.