At RONG LU Art Space in Shanghai, Lumière des Lumières unfolds as a luminous dialogue between two titans of modern art – Chu Teh-Chun, the Chinese master who made France his home, and Georges Mathieu, the French painter whose bold gestures came to define lyrical abstraction. The exhibition focuses on their defining achievements of the 1960s and 1970s, decades when both artists expanded the very language of painting through light, rhythm, and abstraction.

Housed in a century-old villa in the French Concession once belonging to the industrialist Rong Desheng, the setting itself embodies the spirit of cultural encounter, where heritage and modernity, East and West, intersect. More than a showcase of iconic works, the exhibition becomes a stage for cross-cultural creativity, highlighting the enduring impact of Franco-Chinese exchange on the trajectory of modern art.

With Lumière des Lumières, RONG LU continues its role as a cultural host – curating spaces where artistic legacies resonate across borders and generations.

“In the moonlit mountain temple, I seek cassia blossoms; from the pavilion upon the river, I watch the tides rise. When shall I return once more?
— Bai Juyi, Three Lyrics on Recalling Jiangnan, Tang Dynasty

“On the old road to Paris, I was taught the classical arts. In a grand mansion of entirely Eastern splendor, I accomplished my great work and retired in glory.
— Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations

In 1935, at the age of fifteen, Chu Teh-Chun entered the progressive National Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he studied traditional Chinese painting while exploring the emerging language of modern art. During the wartime migration inland, the landscapes and shifting terrains he encountered left a lasting impression on his memory. These experiences, transposed through emotion rather than observation, became the foundation of a visual language that fused the spiritual sensibility of Chinese painting with the conceptual framework of abstraction.

Two decades later, Chu travelled across continents to Paris. The city’s vibrant artistic milieu provided fertile ground for his immersion in abstraction. His command of technique, sensitivity to light and shadow, and ability to unite the lyricism of ink painting with the chromatic richness of oil on canvas allowed him to achieve a rare synthesis, an equilibrium between Eastern and Western pictorial traditions.

In 1945, the French modernist Georges Mathieu pioneered action painting through his distinctive method of dripping and pouring pigment. At a time when geometric abstraction dominated post-war Europe, Mathieu emerged as a vital force in redefining abstraction as an act of unrestrained lyrical freedom that privileged form over content and gesture over intent.

During his 1957 visit to Japan, Mathieu drew inspiration from calligraphy, distilling from it a form of non-representational writing. His sweeping strokes and improvisational performances, often held before live audiences, left an indelible mark on the history of action painting. The vivid contrasts of colour, the dense materiality of pigment and the physical dynamism of his gestures coalesced into a visual language in which artist and painting became one.

Both artists spent formative years in Paris during the mid-twentieth century, a moment of particular artistic convergence when East and West, tradition and innovation, met in a shared pursuit of aesthetic transcendence.

RONG LU Art Space in Shanghai is honoured to present Lumière des Lumières, featuring landmark works from the 1960s and 1970s by Chu Teh-Chun and Georges Mathieu, two leading figures of lyrical abstraction. Staged within a century-old villa in the former French Concession, once the residence of industrialist Rong Desheng, the exhibition situates this meeting of Chu Teh-Chun and Georges Mathieu within a setting that reflects Shanghai’s own history of cultural dialogue and artistic modernity.

The French word lumière denotes light, while lumières evokes enlightenment and the illumination of intellect and spirit. In Chu’s paintings, light emerges through the interplay of colour and line, warmth and shadow, transforming the pictorial field into a space of luminous vibration. Mathieu, by contrast, channels light through movement, through the centrifugal force of colour and gesture that cuts across the canvas like a radiant beam. Their artistic practices, distinct in method yet united in intent, share a sustained inquiry into the metaphysics of light and the Franco-Chinese exchange that shaped their modernisms.

The Chinese title 德厚流光 (De Hou Liu Guang), meaning ‘virtue flows forth and light endures’, encapsulates the spirit of the exhibition, which traces how two distinct artistic languages converged in post-war Paris to redefine abstraction across cultures and generations.

Chu Teh-Chun

In mid-century Paris, Chu Teh-Chun forged a painterly language that reconciled the structural clarity of Chinese landscape painting with the expressive freedom of Western abstraction. He often spoke of ‘interpreting nature in the heart’, believing that painting was not a reproduction of the external world but an outward expression of imagination, perception and inner spirit. This conviction resonated with both the essence of Chinese ink painting and the principles of abstraction.

Even after achieving early recognition in Taiwan, Chu sought new artistic frontiers in Paris. Inspired by the work of Nicolas de Staël and the abstract painters he encountered in the West, he turned decisively away from figuration. He pursued a balance between control and spontaneity, transforming the fluid rhythm of cursive script into gestural movement on canvas. His use of line, light and void conveyed a sense of temporal and spatial breathing. Poetry became the structural axis of his compositions, where the lyricism of Chinese verse and the meditative depth of landscape painting found perfect accord. Through his command of oil pigment, he achieved the tonal subtlety and atmospheric resonance of ink, shaping light into a chromatic pulse that embodied the synthesis of Chinese and Western artistic traditions.

Georges Mathieu

In mid-century Europe, as abstraction flourished, Georges Mathieu emerged as a self-taught visionary who transformed its trajectory. His paintings, charged with velocity and energy, are defined by lines that seem to explode across the surface. Often wielding elongated brushes or applying paint directly from the tube, Mathieu’s process celebrated immediacy and chance. Each gesture became an extension of thought, an event inscribed in colour and form.

The American critic Clement Greenberg described Mathieu as one of the most influential European artists of his generation. In 1947, the French critic Jean José Marchand coined the term lyrical abstraction to describe Mathieu’s work, establishing him as a foundational figure of the movement. From the 1950s onwards, his practice transcended national borders, appearing on stages in Japan, the United States, Brazil and the Middle East. Painting became performance, a live act of creation in which the work unfolded before an audience in real time.

Mathieu’s influence extended far beyond the canvas. His dynamic approach informed the rise of performance and conceptual art in the 1960s, while his large-scale commissions, including murals for the Maison de la Radio in Paris, designs for Air France posters, the ten-franc coin and the Antenne 2 television logo, brought abstraction into the public sphere. The Japanese avant-garde collective Gutai cited Mathieu alongside Jackson Pollock as a pivotal figure in shaping the dialogue between Eastern calligraphy and Western abstraction.

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Lumière des Lumières is not only a tribute to two modern masters but also a rediscovery of the broader narrative of cross-cultural exchange that shaped twentieth-century art. RONG LU Art Space, located within the former residence of Rong Desheng, a site that once served as a private retreat for the Li Hongzhang family and now stands as a centre of contemporary culture, situates the exhibition in both an architectural and historical context. As a crucible of ideas and encounters, RONG LU bridges both old and new, East and West.

To revisit this pivotal chapter in art history is to reaffirm how art transcends generations, connects cultures and continues to ignite the imagination. True to the spirit of 德厚流光 (De Hou Liu Guang), meaning ‘virtue endures and light flows onward’, the exhibition reflects how the legacies of Chu Teh-Chun and Georges Mathieu continue to shape the evolving discourse of global modernism.