The Art Museum of China Academy of Art in Hangzhou has opened a retrospective devoted to Chu Teh-Chun, one of the academy's best-known former students, as part of the run-up to the school's centenary in 2028. The exhibition, which opened on October 19, 2026, gathers roughly 260 works and archival materials, including 107 oil paintings, and remains on view through February 18, 2027.

Chu enrolled at the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1935 and moved to France in 1955, where he built a career in Western abstract painting while keeping visible ties to Chinese landscape traditions. In 1997 he became the first Chinese member of France's Academie des Beaux-Arts, and in 2001 he received the insignia of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The show is arranged in six sections that follow his path from his early years around West Lake through his mature explorations of light, colour and cosmic imagery.

The academy's president, Yu Xuhong, who also directs its art museum and curated the exhibition, frames West Lake as the emotional starting point Chu carried with him throughout his life abroad. To mark the opening, Chu's family donated 57 of his works to the academy, together with a sculpture by Albert Feraud from the artist's own collection, strengthening the school's holdings for research into twentieth-century Chinese modern art.

For visitors, the exhibition offers a rare chance to see the full arc of a painter who bridged two art worlds: the ink-and-landscape sensibility of his training in Hangzhou and the gestural abstraction he pursued in Paris. It also anchors the academy's centenary programming with a homecoming story, returning a celebrated alumnus to the campus where his career began.