Painted during Chu's Taiwan years, Les Baigneuses belongs to the figurative foundation from which his abstraction emerged. Bodies are simplified and compressed within a modest canvas. Color blocks and contours carry as much weight as anatomical description, showing an artist already interested in how figures lock together across a surface.
The subject recalls a long European tradition, but Chu's handling avoids academic finish. Space is shallow, edges remain active, and the arrangement reads almost like a compact sequence of written forms. The later abstract painter is visible not because the image predicts a style, but because rhythm has begun to outrank narrative.
