Chu Teh-Chun

Early life and education Chu Teh-Chun was born in 1920 in the town of Baitu in Xiao County, which was then in Jiangsu province but now part of Anhui province. who were prominent Chinese artists trained in France. Among his schoolmates were Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki. The three, dubbed the "Three Musketeers" of Chinese modernist art, were all elected as members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. It was owing to Chu's influence that Wu Guanzhong decided to abandon engineering and become an artist.

Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu and Fang Ganmin, and their students Chu Teh-Chun, Wu Guanzhong, and Zao Wou-Ki, have been collectively referred to the "West Lake" school of artists (西湖畫派).

Career In 1945 Chu became a faculty member of the architecture department of the National Central University in Nanjing, then China's capital.

Inspired by Nicolas de Staël's abstract landscape paintings, Chu abandoned figurative painting and adopted a unique style using bold strokes of colour which evoked Chinese calligraphy. His new style was immediately successful. 2020: Shifting Landscapes (with Andrew Luk), De Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong

Art market In November 2013, an untitled oil on canvas diptych painted by Chu in 1963 was sold for HK$70.7 million (US$9.1 million) at an auction in Hong Kong, setting his personal record. His previous record was another diptych entitled "La Foret Blanche II", which was sold at auction in 2012 for HK$60 million, or $7.7 million USD The current auction record for the artist is HKD 229,568,000 ($ 29,544,254), achieved on April 21, 2021 at Sotheby's Hong Kong for a large triptych "Harmonie hivernale", from the artist's acclaimed snowscape series.

According to the Hurun Art List, the total value of Chu's artworks sold in 2013 at public auction was US$65 million, ranking third among all living Chinese artists, behind only Zeng Fanzhi and Fan Zeng.

Death On 26 March 2014, Chu Teh-Chun died in Paris at age 93, closely following the deaths of his friends and fellow modern artists Wu Guanzhong in 2010 and Zao Wou-Ki in 2013.