AT 84, CHU TEH-CHUN seems tirelessly sprightly. The Jiangsu-born painter still works six to eight hours a day in the huge atelier behind the garden of his house in Vitry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris.
He attends weekly meetings at the Institute de France's Academy of Fine Arts, the four-century-old body of notables charged with directing and nurturing French heritage and culture. He was made the first ethnic-Chinese member in 1997. When he isn't painting, Chu relaxes by writing calligraphy, but at weekends, free of galleries' distracting phone calls, he finds time for even more work. Since his first solo exhibition in 1958, Chu has held shows all over the globe. 'For him, relaxation is changing an activity,' says his wife of more than 40 years, Chu Tung Ching-chao, a former Chinese-language teacher who now helps run the business side of her husband's career. 'He's always thinking, so he doesn't see the red light. He's always in the clouds.'
Perhaps the most concrete evidence of Chu's energy and creativity is the acclaim he continues to garner in France and China, where only a decade or so ago, his abstracts would have been denounced as bourgeois decadence. As part of the Year of China in France, the city of Cannes has held three retrospectives of his work. This follows Chu's mammoth commission for the Shanghai Opera House, Festive Symphony, a 4.3-metre by 7.3-metre oil on canvas that French critic and art historian Pierre Cabanne has called 'a piece of music, a synthesis of sound, of musical variations with different rhythms going from allegro to andante with its movements of crescendo or staccato'.
Officially inaugurated in the summer of 2003, the painting hung for a month at Paris' Palais Garnier opera house before it was moved to Shanghai.
Chu's latest exhibit, Chu Teh-chun and His Universe, opened on Friday at the University of Hong Kong. Curated by gallery owner Alice King, it includes 10 abstract oil landscapes, five acrylic pieces and 11 Chinese ink creations, and is being shown as part of Le French May festival.
Chu is among France's most famous living abstract painters and, along with Zao Wouki - whose works were shown in Paris last winter as part of the Year of China event - is the best-known mainland-born artist in the country today.