The World of
Teng Chiu
Frye Museum Spotlights Art Collection Owned
by Professor Couple
POINTING TO A FAVORITE painting, “Lake Lure,
North Carolina,” Seattle
Pacific University Professor of International Business and Economics
Joanna Poznanska says, “This makes you believe the colors of the
place are truer than the real place.”
The painting is part of a large, one-artist collection owned by Poznanska
and her husband, Kazimierz Poznanski, professor of international
studies at the University of Washington. (Last names differ by gender
in their native Poland.) From now through May 11, Frye Art Museum
in downtown Seattle highlights 50 pieces from the collection in
an exhibit titled “Path of the Sun: The World of Teng Chiu.” It includes
a retrospective of oils by Chiu, a once-famous Chinese artist who
spent his adult life in the Western Hemisphere.
Chiu’s work has been largely forgotten, but the professor couple hopes to change
that. Poznanska has become an acknowledged expert on Chiu’s work, as has her
husband, who wrote an essay for the exhibition catalog. According to Poznanski, “Chiu
was a landscaper, capable of creating an illusion of universal harmony, often
by depicting places where mountains meet water.”
Born in 1903, Chiu moved to
the United States as a young man and rose to fame in the art world, winning top
awards in the United States and Europe for his expressive, color-soaked technique.
The work Chiu accomplished was unlike either Western or Eastern art of the day.
The artist explained the middle road he traveled in painting: “I am trying to
get the best out of both Eastern and Western art. I am using the techniques of
European art, but I try to preserve the broadness of Eastern art with its preoccupation
with essentials.”
Seattle Pacific Professor of Art Michael Caldwell, an accomplished
painter himself, visited the Frye exhibit. “I was impressed by the facility Chiu
had for handling paint,” Caldwell reports. “He was able to convey a sense of
place — even the time of day — with just a stroke of color.”
After Chiu’s death
in 1972, his paintings drifted from the media’s attention. Over the past several
decades, however, Poznanska and her husband have slowly built up what is assumed
to be the largest collection of his work. One painting comes from the estate
of Madame Chiang Kaishek, wife of the Chinese president, who was known to be
close to Chiu’s family. The couple believes it was originally a gift to the president’s
family from the artist. They plan to take the exhibit to museums where Chiu lived,
from China to England. “We want to introduce him to the Chinese world,” says
Poznanski, “and reintroduce him to the West.”
— BY MARGARET D. SMITH
— PHOTO BY JIMI LOTT
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