CHU TEH-CHUN

de Sarthe Gallery Hong Kong, proudly presents a collection of the works of one of China's most renowned post-war abstract painters, Chu Teh Chun. This long awaited collection of work spans the breadth of this impressive artist's celebrated career. Each of the canvases in the show illustrates Chu Teh Chun's enviable ability to unify his experience of the Chinese cultural landscape with that of the modern European aesthetic in which he has been immersed throughout his career.

Born in 1920 in Jiangsu Province, China, the France-based Chu Teh Chun's skills at creating expansive imaginative landscapes of rolling colour has led him to be considered among the elite of China's most illustrious modern painters. His broad expressive brush strokes illicit vast unexplored landscapes that are illustrated through a deeply-rooted consideration of the traditions of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Nature unfurls within Chu Teh Chun's canvases by distorting the viewer's expectation of horizon and perspective. His poetic expression of nature uncovers new realms of the abstract form and in doing so conjure an alternative interpretation of the medium and its capabilities. He can find the reality of nature in landscape while remaining true to abstraction.

An aggressive market demand for Chu Teh Chun's work combined with the artist's limited output makes an exhibition of this size and quality an anotable rarity. In 2010, a retrospective of his work was held at the National Art Museum of China to celebrate the artist's defining contribution to the international cultural conversation with his 90th birthday.