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C OMPOSITION NO. 268

COMPOSITION NO. 268

measurements note
148 by 300 cm. 58 1/4 by 118 1/8 in.

Signed Chu Teh-chun in Chinese and English and dated 67-68.

Oil on canvas, framed

Condition Note:

Chu Tehchun, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris, cover and pp.72-73

We are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described in our catalogue. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSION CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

NOTE

Although oil painting is the primary medium for Zhu Dequn(Chu Teh-Chun), the France-based Chinese artist used to be a traditional Chinese painting fanatic when he was studying in the National Hangzhou Art School. However, as the school lacked a department of traditional Chinese painting, he had no choice but to pick up oil painting as his profession, which resulted in today's Zhu, a master of abstract painting. But Zhu Dequn has never forgotten the sublime sophistication of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Taking western abstract painting as his point of departure, Zhu has managed to create his own style with the unique vision and brushstroke of Chinese painting.

In Sotheby's 2007 Spring Auctions, we are glad to present seven works by Zhu, culled from different phases of the artist's life. Executed in 1968, "Composition No. 268" (Lot 8) is an important work presenting the artist's vision of traditional Chinese painting by means of western oil painting. The large-scale, four-panel work "Force d'¡¦ame" (Lot 11), which was created between 2004 and 2005 and was exhibited in Zhu's solo exhibition held in the Shanghai Museum of Art in 2005, demonstrates Zhu's mature technique. Also, our 2007 Spring auction presents a traditional ink painting of Zhu which was executed in 2000.

Zhu's early exposure of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy came from his father when he was still a child. Being a connoisseur, his father would take the paintings and calligraphy scrolls out from the chests and hang them on the wall every summer. So Zhu's summer holidays were usually spent with the masterpieces of Qiu Ying, Dong Qichang, Chen Hongshou and Tang Bohu.

His father later hired a private teacher to give him lessons in calligraphy. Among all those masters of calligraphy, the young Zhu, however, seems to have been interested in nothing but works by Wang Xizhi. 'I am not interested in the styles of Yan Zhenqing, Ouyang Xiu and Liu Gongquan. But when I found a copy of Wang Xizhi's Mojuege, I was immediately attracted by the fluidity of brush movement and elegant shapes of the characters, and I started to copy Wang's work.'

Zhu also revealed that he was fascinated by traditional Chinese painting when he first enrolled in the National Hangzhou Art School, and he copied the works of masters such as Shi Tao and Ba Da Shan Ren every night.

In 1935, Zhu enrolled in the National Hangzhou Art School. Headed by Lin Fengmian, the school is regarded as the cradle of Chinese new and modern art. Wu Taiyu who received education in France, perhaps influenced Zhu more than other. Thus, Zhu was highly influenced by the art movements and artists from France, such as post-impressionism, fauvism, and especially Paul Cezanne. When recalling the works he created before 1949 (which were left in mainland China when he relocated to Taiwan that year), Zhu said that most of them were in the style of either fauvism or post-impressionism. Nevertheless, he also created some Chinese ink-and-wash paintings before heading to France for further study in 1955.

In his essay titled In Memory of Wu Taiyu, Zhu wrote: 'As a disciple of Master Wu (Taiyu), I have become an admirer of Cezanne. My years of art practicing in China are basically in the range of post-impressionism, until a sketch session in Baxian Mountain in 1953. I was in this misty, cloudy jungle in a 2,000-metre valley, and my epiphany suddenly arrived. I began to understand the relation between xu and shi, poetic traditional spirit and nature. With all the mist and pines and cypress trees around me, I was envisioning the ideal brush movement in calligraphy.' That sketch session changed Zhu's view on painting, he began to use lines and the shadow cast by the mist and cloud to create his typical vision of traditional Chinese painting.

After moving to Taiwan, Zhu continued his engagement with post-impressionism and fauvism. He also kept fine-tuning his landscape paintings, in an attempt to achieve the vision of ink-and-wash painting with oil on canvas. 'I wanted to combine the characteristics of Chinese landscape painting with the western landscape painting, such as to focus less on the realistic approach, or to use multiple vanishing points for composition.' Besides landscape, Zhu also did still life and portrait painting.

But realism has in fact been a lasting influence on Zhu, no matter in his Taiwan or early Paris period. The delicate realistic work "Portrait de Ching-Chao", which was created in 1955, won the silver medal of Paris Spring Salon.

In 1956, Zhu saw a retrospective on Nicholas de Stael in the Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. The free-form, expressive paintings of De Stael inspired Zhu with a kind of freedom of expression that he had long dreamt of. He then started to drift towards abstract forms, and created a series of works containing intercrossing lines and thick colour blocks, including "Crepuscule de la Ville","Vue en Ville" and "Serie de Fleurs".

In the 1960s, Zhu started to turn back to ink-and-wash painting, and the subject of his works gave way to abstract vision. Elements of Chinese landscape painting were seen in these works, which were usually titled simply 'Untitled' or 'Structure'. When writing about this period, art critic Gao Tianmin said that 'the materiality of Zhu's works is weakened as vision and atmosphere have become the major concern, creating a poetic aura, or painterly poetry.'

One of those works, "La Source", which was painted in 1965, was hailed as a modern version of Song dynasty painters Fan Kuan or Kuo Hsi. The work depicts mountains at various distances, with cluttering lines in the middle, making a contrast with the illusionary brushstrokes in the surrounding. As an attempt to blend western abstract painting and Chinese ink-and-wash, the fusion of the illusionary and the concrete renders the mountain rather 'un-mountainish'.

The work "Composition No. 268" (Lot 8) was created three years after "La Source". The centre of canvas consists of a group of lively and solid lines, surrounded by blue, green and black paint. The white blocks remind people of the concept of 'liubai' in Chinese ink-and-wash painting, where the artist would deliberately leave part of their canvas blank to make contrast.

Zhu's scarce and introspective brushstrokes in this work are the embodiment of the fluidity of air and spirit within his imaginary landscape. The colour scheme of black (in the lower part) and green (in the upper) takes the metaphor of heaven and earth, yet blends the two seamlessly. Again, it is the juxtaposition of the illusionary and the concrete that connects the work to Chinese landscape painting.

"Abstract paintings are free from the constraint of shape and form, it is similar to concept of Chinese ink-and-wash which favours what's in the artist's heart and mind to the actual shape. Actually the concept of western painting has been moving towards that of the literati painting of China in the Romantic era."

"Charles Baudelaire once said that he saw poetry in Delacroix's paintings. Indeed, there are a lot of things in common between the painting theories in China and the West, it's just that the concept of "vision" has been developed in China for more than 1,000 years, and similar notion was absent in the West until the end of 19th century. But western art has seen a swift development and has reached the state of "formless" - a state that Chinese painting has never gone into - within one hundred years. I tried to learn from the western experience in order to develop the aesthetics of Tang and Song dynasty and to create "formless" painting, this is the spirit of Chinese painting." said Zhu.

That was how Zhu found his unique style in Paris. He then developed several colour schemes for the style, including the passionate red and the spring-like green. But it is the colour blue, a metaphor of ocean and life, that is the most recognizable among Zhu's works. "Force d'ame" (Lot 11) is a classic example of his blueish work, which measures two by four and a half metres. The centre of this four-panel work consists not of calligraphy-like strokes (as seen in "Composition No. 268"), but of a couple of irregular colour blocks. The very centre of this composition is occupied by dark red within black paint. This giant work is wilder and bolder than the previous ones by the artist, with the only thing unchanged being one of the most important elements of Zhu's work, the light.

'I think a painting is plain and lifeless without light. The light in the works of Rembrandt makes them more profound, grandiose and solid. The light you see on my paintings are the ray from my heart and soul.'

Light composes the white blocks in the painting and serves as a contrast to the coloured part, which once again evokes the spirit of Chinese landscape painting under the oil paint of the abstraction.

Living abroad but still connected to his own culture, Zhu has never abandoned ink-and-wash painting and calligraphy, which he has been practicing since his childhood. The work "Untitled" (Lot 16), composed of calligraphic lines and ink colour block, is typical of Zhu's ink-and-wash creations. It takes inspiration from the pattern of his oil painting by using the density of colour black as the focus in the foreground and contrasting with extended gray area at the back. Here, the Chinese and western elements blend so well that they merge and become "one". This is classical Chinese aesthetic value.