Modern silk and oil lacquer
Painting vietnamese
One hundred paintings to travel through a century of Vietnamese invention, from the pioneers of Hanoi to contemporary voices, with silk, lacquer, oil and gouache as so many paths towards a singular modernity.
A story of translations
A modernity invented in several voices
Modern Vietnamese painting is not just about the arrival of Western techniques. In Hanoi, the Indochina School of Fine Arts, opened in 1925, became a laboratory where oil and perspective meet silk, lacquer, calligraphic line and much older visual traditions. Nguyễn Phan Chânh, Tô Ngọc Vân, Trần Văn Cẩn or Nguyễn Gia Trí do not choose between two worlds: they make a third.
The wars of the 20th century then moved the workshops, subjects and looks. The intimate portrait rubs shoulders with the memory of burned villages, the streets of Hanoi, the mountains of the North-West and the work scenes. After reunification then the opening of Dổi Moi, painting welcomes more individual experience, abstraction, exile and the contemporary city.
This journey begins with the works that defined this story, then moves towards its ramifications. There we come across lacquer gardens, faces on silk, fields, rains, markets and a few animals which have clearly not been ordered to pose calmly.
Vietnamese painting does not obediently reflect a modernity from elsewhere: it moves it, thickens it and teaches it new colors.
Portrait, motherhood, solitude and family life give the body an intimate presence, far from the anecdote.
Streets, facades and cafes transform the capital into a sensitive archive of the changes of the century.
Rice fields, mountains, rivers and villages connect landscape, work and sense of belonging.
Silk, lacquer, oil and gouache give each generation another way of organizing light and memory.
The 100 essential Vietnamese paintings
Editorial ranking1 -20
Modern foundations and masterpieces
To Ngọc Van
Two young women and a child
Two young women absorbed in their silence frame a child sitting in the foreground. Tô Ngọc Vân combines the construction learned at the Indochina School of Fine Arts with soft light, without reducing his models to elegance decorative. The balance of looks and fabrics makes it one of the founding images of modern Vietnamese painting.
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Nguyễn Phan Chanh
Chơi ô ɪ quan
Four young girls play ô ɪ quan, a traditional game whose boxes punctuate the foreground. Presented in Paris in 1931, this silk painting established Nguyễn Phan Chânh's reputation by combining modern composition, earth palette and calm observation of rural life.
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Trần Văn Cẩn
Em Thûy (Little Thûy)
Trần Văn Cẩn paints his niece Thûy sitting on a rattan chair, her gaze direct and her hands wisely brought together. The simplicity of the pose, the clear range and the psychological attention have made this portrait a national treasure of Vietnam.
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May Trung Thứ
Young woman reading Kim Van Kiều
A young woman reads Kim Vân Kiều, a great poem by Nguyễn Du, in an intimate space reduced to a few elegant lines. Mai Trung Thứ unites the delicacy of silk with Vietnamese literary culture while affirming the style that will make it successful in Paris.
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Nguyễn Gia Tri
Young women in a garden
Female silhouettes mingle with trees in a garden rendered in layers of sanded lacquer, gold and color. Nguyễn Gia Trí transforms a medium associated with decorative arts into modern monumental painting, one of the great inventions of the Indochina School.
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The Pho
Young girl in white
Painted at the start of Lê Phổ's career, the young woman stands out with almost sculptural restraint. The pose, the shine of the garment and the construction of the face show how the painter adapts academic oil to a sensitivity vietnamese. The work precedes the floral and luminous figures who made it famous in France.
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Lê Thị Lựu
Mother and child
Lê Thị Lựu builds the relationship between mother and child through the inclination of faces and the continuity of fabrics. The first great woman to graduate from the Indochina School, she gave silk painting a modern intimacy that traveled between Hanoi and Paris.
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Vũ Cao Dam
Two young women
Two female figures occupy a bare space where line, clothing and proximity are enough to create the story. Vũ Cao Dam transposes into painting the flexibility acquired as a sculptor and the elegance of the School of Paris.
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Bui Xuan Phai
Hanoi Street (pharmacy)
Bùi Xuân Phaïi narrows Hanoi's old street into an architecture of sloping facades, signs and thick shadows. The material seems worn like the walls it represents; blacks structure a fragile, familiar and city stubbornly alive. This vision has become inseparable from the pictorial memory of the capital.
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Nguyễn Sáng
The Enemy burned my village
Nguyễn Sáng evokes war through a compact group of survivors, closed faces and dark lacquer-worked material. The work does not show the fire itself: it paints what remains after it, when loss becomes collective memory.
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Nguyễn Tễ Nghiêm
Ancient dance
Dancers inspired by the sculptures of municipal houses follow one another in a rhythm of profiles, arms and signs. Nguyễn Tễ Nghiêm does not copy ancient art: he puts it back into motion in an immediately Vietnamese modern language.
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Nam Sơn
Portrait of my mother
Nam Sơn represents his mother with a sobriety that brings the family portrait closer to the academic painting learned through contact with Victor Tardieu. Co-founder of the Indochina School of Fine Arts, he affirms here that a Vietnamese model does not need exoticism to fully occupy the canvas.
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Nguyễn Tường Lan
Mountain market
The mountain market brings together silhouettes, baskets and fabrics in a composition where the crowd retains air. A rare survival of the work of Nguyễn Tường Lân, the painting recalls the diversity of research carried out by the four great masters of the Indochina School.
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Lê Văn Miến
Portrait of Phan Văn Du
Lê Văn Miến paints Phan Văn Du with the modeling and depth learned in France, but without transforming the Vietnamese notable into colonial curiosity. This portrait is among the first milestones of modern oil painting in Vietnam.
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Hàm Nghi
Landscape of exile
Exiled in Algeria after resisting French colonial power, former emperor Hàm Nghi found in the landscape another way to preserve his freedom. Its sensitive touch and its Mediterranean horizons tell the story of a Vietnamese modernity born far from the country.
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Do Quang Em
Portrait of my wife
Dỗ Quang Em installs his model in a precise light which nevertheless seeks neither photographic effect nor flattery. The face, hands and silence of the background give the portrait an interior duration. Mastery of chiaroscuro here renews a classic genre at the heart of post-war Vietnamese realism.
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Nguyen Trung
Untitled (the tea seller)
Painted on a bag of rice, the tea seller transforms the shortage of materials into plastic force. Nguyễn Trung simplifies the body, accessories and space without erasing the social presence of the model. The texture of the support remains visible and inscribes daily life in the very material of the painting.
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Nguyễn Lam
Cuối Cùng (The End)
A tense figure and an almost closed space give this painting by Nguyễn Lâm a rare existential intensity. The artist breaks with the heroic narrative to make the surface a place of anguish, color and condensation. This work from 1965 announces the personal paths followed by the modernity of the South.
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Dao Sĩ Chu
Young smiling girl
The smile of the model and the frankness of the colors give this young woman a presence far removed from the ceremonial portrait. Dao Sĩ Chu, painter and critic, defended a Vietnamese modernity capable of absorbing Paris without losing its own tone.
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Lê Ba Dảng
Indomitable landscape
Lê Ba Dảng constructs a landscape seen both from the sky and from the interior, made of reliefs, voids and almost calligraphic signs. Space becomes a memory of exile where Vietnam, France and abstraction cease to respect the usual borders.
See the instructions →21 -40
War, memory and territories
Phan Kế An
Memory of an afternoon in the North-West
The Northwest Mountains emerge in bands of color and superimposed depths rather than Western perspective. Phan Kế An transforms a travel memory into a national landscape, with lacquer to give the distance an almost tactile density.
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Bội Tran
Young woman from Huế
A young woman from Huế appears in a silent space where clothing, flowers and lacquer make up a restrained elegance. Bội Trân extends the tradition of Vietnamese female portraiture without making it a docile postcard.
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Do Son
Mother's heart
Facing a wall of portraits, a mother silently measures the human cost of war. Dỗ Sơn contrasts the heaviness of mourning with light colors and the presence of a child, a sign of possible continuity. The composition transforms the family memory in collective history without sacrificing individual emotion.
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Tran Luong
Underwater
Trần Lương immerses the eye in a world of floating shapes, eyes and unstable creatures. The memory of the ponds of his childhood during the war becomes a pictorial space where observation, fear and imagination merge. Oil maintains the fluidity of the pattern while giving the painting an almost mental depth.
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Dang Xuan Hoa
The Boy's Evening
A boy works under a small light source while domestic objects squeeze into a blue interior. Dặng Xuân Hocha organizes the scene by silhouettes, angles and reflections, without losing the fragility of the moment. The daily becomes a theater of memory, characteristic of the pictorial revival of Hanoi.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Afternoon in the countryside
Hà Trí Hiếu brings together rural figures, beasts and architecture in a range of lands, yellows and greens. The deliberately simplified shapes give the memory a clarity of emblem without freezing it. This countryside has since been rebuilt memory reveals the decisive place of nostalgia in the painting of Dổi Moi.
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Tran Trong Vu
Rainwater, even salty, is not silent
Trần Trọng Vũ makes rain a material loaded with memory, dense enough to blur the line between landscape and story. The title transforms salt water into a witness: what falls from the sky retains a voice, even when history would prefer silence.
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The Quang Ha
The Dictator
The Quang Ha distorts the face and posture of the Dictator to the point of making his authority waver. Political power here takes on the appearance of a nervous mask, trapped in a matter that refuses to remain well disciplined.
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Ha Manh Thang
A half-life 2
Hà Mạnh Thắng organizes A Half-Life 2 as an incomplete assessment, crossed by forms which appear then disappear. The table does not summarize an existence: rather it shows how time moves its benchmarks.
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Do Minh Tam
Bản Nhạc Dỏ (The Red Song)
In The Red Song, Dỗ Minh Tâm makes color a rhythm before making it a symbol. The reds lead figures and space in the same pulsation, between collective momentum and historical anxiety.
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Bui Xuan Phai
Young Girl in Hat
Bùi Xuân Phaïi concentrates Young girl with a hat on her face, the dark edge of the headgear and the restraint of the pose. The intimacy of the portrait reminds us that the street painter of Hanoi also knew how to build a presence with very little decoration.
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Dang Xuan Hoa
Human Objects No. 12
Human objects no. 12 mix bodies, furniture and domestic memories in a deliberately unstable space. Dặng Xuân Hocha paints things as partners of memory: they surround the figure, extend it and sometimes almost steal the spotlight.
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Nguyen Quan
Self-portrait in the moonlight
Under the moonlight, Nguyễn Quân treats his own face as an apparition rather than an identity card. The shadows shift the lines and give the self-portrait the fragility of an encounter with oneself.
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Nguyen Xuan Tiep
The Buffalo Guardians
Nguyễn Xuân Tiệp represents buffalo keepers in a landscape where childhood, animals and rural work share the same rhythm. The scene avoids decorative pastoral care by letting solitude and expanse weigh on the small figures.
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Tran Luu Hau
Landscape
Trần Lưu Hậu frees the landscape from precise description to let color reconstruct reliefs, trees and depth. Its energetic touch keeps the feeling of the place without locking it into a textbook geography.
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Nguyen Phuoc
Three women
Three Women by Nguyễn Phưoc is based on the differences in posture, silences and color relationships between the figures. Their proximity does not automatically create a conversation: it leaves it to the eye to guess its nature.
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Bui Suoi Hoa
Musician and lotus
Bùi Suối Hoa associates the musician with the lotus, two motifs linked by the same movement of concentration. The melody remains invisible, but the gestures, lines and calm of the flower give it a space to resonate.
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Do Son
July rains
In July Rains, Dỗ Sơn thickens the air, darkens distances and lets the water change the rhythm of the landscape. The monsoon is not a curtain added to the decor: it becomes the real subject of the painting.
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Tran Trong Vu
Cockfight
Trần Trọng Vũ transforms cockfighting into a clash of lines, feathers and circular tensions. The popular energy of the motif remains, but the scene is especially valuable for the way in which the two animals magnetize the entire surface.
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Dang Xuan Hoa
Back
Return of Dặng Xuân Hoam brings together characters and objects in an interior full of waiting. The title not only says that a person returns: it measures everything in the house and memory that continued to exist during their absence.
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Dổi Moi: the return of the individual
Nguyen Quan
Road to Tây Bắc
The Road to Tây Bễc by Nguyễn Quân crosses a mountainous territory associated with the movements, battles and encounters of the North-West. The windings of the path organize a passing painting where the landscape retains the imprint of history.
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Bui Suoi Hoa
Houses by the river
Bùi Suối Hoa lines up the houses by the river without separating them from their reflections and the humidity of the landscape. The water gives the village its breath, while reminding us how a bank is both a residence and a passage.
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Nguyen Xuan Tiep
The return
The Return of Nguyễn Xuân Tiệp depicts the moment when a journey ends without the experience of departure disappearing. The gestures retained and the space between the characters give more weight to the reunion than a sentimental demonstration.
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Vo Xuong
Heroic mother - three departures of her children
In Heroic Mother, V¢ Xương follows three successive departures from the point of view of the one who remains. The official story of the sacrifice thus gives way to family time, made of waiting, separation and courage without fanfare.
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Vo Xuong
Uncle Ho VIsiting the Battlefied in Hoa Binh
V¢ Xương represents Hê Chí Minh visiting Hocha Bikh's front as close as possible to the fighters and the field. The scene constructs an image of command through presence and listening rather than monumental distance.
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Vo Xuong
Battlefield in Phuoc Long
Battlefield in Phuoc Long brings together disrupted terrain, fighters and traces of violence in a composition where nothing seems stable. VÆ Xương paints the battle as a lived experience, far from a neatly arranged military panorama.
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Vo Xuong
The War at the Border of Southeast
The War at the Border of Southeast addresses border conflict through its movements, ruptures and uncertainty of the terrain. At VÆ Xương, history painting remains attached to bodies moving into a space larger than themselves.
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Seen Dung
Memory
Memory of Vũ Dũng superimposes shapes and traces as if the past returned in fragments rather than in order. The composition accepts the gaps: they are precisely the place where the memory becomes painting.
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Seen Dung
Wife and husband
Vũ Dũng places wife and husband in a proximity that reveals both common habits and inner distances. The couple is neither symbol nor anecdote; it becomes a careful study of two presences sharing the same space.
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Bui Suoi Hoa
Father and daughter
In Father and Daughter, Bùi Suối Hoa builds tenderness through body positions and the direction of gaze. The family relationship can be read without spectacular gesture, in this economy of signs which makes intimacy credible.
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Do Son
Yellow harmony
Yellow harmony of Dỗ Sơn lets a luminous range connect the shapes instead of isolating them. Yellow acts in turn as light, matter and climate, giving the composition a unity that does not erase its tensions.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Young Girls of the Country
Hà Trí Hiếu paints young girls from the countryside with simplified silhouettes and a palette close to the earth. The scene belongs to rural memory as much as to observation, which prevents it from being reduced to a nice break from the city.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Singers of the day
Singers of the day bring together voices, faces and gestures in a clear light. Hà Trí Hiếu translates the music through the rhythm of the figures, as if the composition had to keep measure while the canvas, reasonably, refrains from singing.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Night singers
Singers of the Night takes up the musical motif in a tighter atmosphere, where bodies emerge from the shadows. The difference with the daytime version is as much due to the silence between the voices as to the darkened colors.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Night
In Night, Hà Trí Hiếu reduces the landmarks and lets the dark masses modify the perception of distances. A few bright accents are enough to keep the scene awake, without transforming the darkness into a simple black background.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Young Peasant with a red cow
The young peasant girl and the red cow occupy the same world of simplified shapes and bold colors. Hà Trí Hiếu gives rural work a familiar presence, while the red animal very effectively prevents the scene from becoming shy.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Self-Portrait V
Self-Portrait V continues Hà Trí Hiếu's examination of his own face across multiple states. Here, the pose and the material favor a moving identity rather than a definitively ironed official image.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Self Portrait II
In Self Portrait II, Hà Trí Hiếu modifies the relationship between face, background and gaze to experience another distance from himself. The series thus becomes a visual diary where each painting somewhat contradicts the previous one.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Self Portrait III
Self Portrait III further focuses attention on the painter's features and physical presence. Differences in color and style prevent repetition: the same model arrives with a different pictorial mood.
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Ha Tri Hieu
Self-Portrait I
Self-Portrait I sets the starting point for a series where Hà Trí Hiếu treats himself as an available subject, but never entirely docile. The frontal gaze does not provide an answer; rather, it opens the investigation.
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Cities, countryside and seasons
Ha Tri Hieu
Self Portrait IV (Man with cows)
Self Portrait IV associates the artist with the cows that populate his rural imagination. The self-portrait thus extends beyond the single face to include a mental landscape, pets and the memory of the countryside.
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Nguyen Quan
Human face I
Nguyễn Quân constructs Human Face I as a frontal presence where the features seem to go back from a memory older than the portrait. The colors retained and the material make the face a mental territory rather than a simply recognizable identity.
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Tran Van Thao
Untitled
Tran Van Thao organizes Untitled around forms that hesitate between figure, sign and domestic space. This voluntary indecision reflects a generation for which abstraction serves less to escape reality than to move its boundaries.
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Dang Xuan Hoa
Childhood on the street
Children occupy the street with a freedom that Dang Xuan Hoa paints without sweet nostalgia. Bodies, objects and facades compose a dense urban memory, crossed by the energy of a childhood which creates its own playground.
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An Dang
Pomegranate Season
An Dang brings together open fruits, foliage and deep reds in The Season of Pomegranates. Still life becomes a sensitive calendar: maturity, abundance and fragility can be read in the shiny skin even before the fruit is shared.
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Dang Dinh Ngo
Morning mist by the lake
Dang Dinh Ngo lets the lake emerge from a mist that erases the boundaries between water, shore and sky. The few dark accents prevent the landscape from disappearing completely and give the morning the slowness of a returning memory.
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Dang Vu Ha
Light in the garden
In Light in the Garden, Dang Vu Ha fragments foliage and gaps in the sun into a moving mosaic. The garden is not described plant by plant: it is reconstructed by the sensation of moving forward under the branches.
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Dao Anh Khanh
Nude 2
Dao Anh Khanh treats the nude as a tension between body, void and pictorial gesture. Nude 2 avoids academic pose by letting the material interrupt the contours, as if the figure appeared at the same rhythm as the painting.
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Dau Quang Toan
Late afternoon
Dau Quang Toan stretches the shadows and softens the colors to capture that moment when the day loses its sharpness. Late afternoon relies on a descending light that transforms ordinary shapes without imposing a narrative on them.
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Dinh Dong
White lotus 05
Dinh Dong's white lotus stands out in small differences in light rather than in spectacular contrast. The flower, charged with spiritual meanings in Vietnam, remains here an organism observed before becoming a symbol.
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Giap Van Tuan
Autumn Street VII
Giap Van Tuan built Autumn Street VII with facades, trees and roadway taken from the same warm range. The city seems momentarily slowed down, as if the season had negotiated a truce with traffic.
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Ha Huy Hiep
Fallen horse
Ha Huy Hiep shows the horse on the ground, a vulnerable mass which contradicts the heroic image of the steed. The fall imposes a sudden stop on the eye and transforms the animal into a subject of fatigue, violence and compassion.
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Hoang A Sang
Native land
Hoang A Sang brings together landscape, house and familiar signs in native Earth without looking for an exact topography. Color rather organizes an emotional geography, made up of places that memory brings together even when they are far away.
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Khong Do Duy
Little Cat I
Little Cat I isolates the animal in a space where attention to the ears, paws and gaze avoids the cute anecdote. Khong Do Duy gives the little body a vigilance that makes the surrounding silence its true territory.
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The Ba Quan
Purple Burst III
Purple Burst III crosses the surface in purple masses and rapid directions. The Ba Quan transforms the wind into a colorful event: it is not represented, but its effects seem to move each shape.
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Lam Duke Manh
Spring is coming
Lam Duc Manh announces spring with clearer light, shoots and a space that begins to circulate again. The renewal remains modest and concrete, without forcing the season to arrive accompanied by a parade of flowers.
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Lam Xung
Burning flame VIII
In Burning Flame VIII, Lam Xung superimposes reds, blacks and yellows until heat is given depth. The series treats fire as an unstable pictorial material, both creative energy and threat.
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Mai Huy Dung
Portrait 09
Mai Huy Dung reduces Portrait 09 to a few decisions of outline, light and gaze. The absence of context focuses attention on the person without claiming that their character can be summed up by a well-chosen accessory.
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Minh Chinh
Descending twilight
Minh Chinh's twilight descends in layers of color that gradually absorb the details of the landscape. A few lines still resist, giving the passage towards night a structure rather than a simple darkening.
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Ngo Duke Hoang
Singers of Quan họ II
Ngo Duc Hoang represents the singers of quan họ in a relationship of voices, costumes and shared gestures. The painting makes this tradition of Bắc Ninh visible without freezing the performers in a folkloric demonstration.
See the instructions →81 -100
Contemporary pluralities
Nguy Dinh Ha
Spring meeting
Spring meeting brings together the characters of Nguy Dinh Ha in a space animated by reunion and color. The distances between bodies tell as much as faces: everyone arrives with their own way of entering the party.
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Nguyen Dinh Duy Quyen
Perfumes and colors of spring
Nguyen Dinh Duy Quyen combines flowers, suggested scents and new colors to evoke Tết. Spring is built as a complete sensory experience, even if the painting must naturally let the perfume work without it.
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Nguyen Hong Giang
The Street of Spring
Nguyen Hong Giang's Spring Street circulates the gaze between new trees, facades and passers-by. Seasonal renewal does not replace the city: it modifies it in small touches, in terms of colors and rhythm.
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Nguyen Phan Bach
Brilliant Street XI
Nguyen Phan Bach pushes the yellows and reds of Bright Street XI to the point of making urban traffic a pulsation. The architecture serves as a measure of this light which seems to want to go beyond the limits of the neighborhood.
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Pham Hoang Minh
Saigon's People Committee Office
Pham Hoang Minh paints Saigon City Hall as an urban landmark caught in contemporary light. Colonial architecture is not isolated from the city: passers-by, trees and traffic place it in an active Vietnamese present.
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Tran Nam
Rice scent
Tran Nam makes ripe rice, agricultural gestures and warm air elements of the same landscape. The scent of rice reminds us that the harvest is viewed with the eyes, but is also memorized by a smell that the canvas should only suggest.
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Tran Viet Thuc
Hidden in the bushes
Shapes appear behind the foliage of Tran Viet Thuc without giving themselves up entirely. Hidden in the bushes organizes the pleasure of seeing and losing sight, transforming the vegetation into a living curtain.
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Seen Manh Tan
The White Clouds embrace spring
Vu Manh Tan brings together white clouds, reliefs and spring light in an ascending composition. The landscape seems to breathe upward, giving the title its embrace without the need to draw arms in the sky.
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Dang Dinh Ngo
Harvest season
Dang Dinh Ngo paints the harvest by the repetition of gestures, the warmth of the fields and the accumulation of sheaves. Collective work gives its structure to the landscape, far from a countryside simply available for walking.
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Dang Vu Ha
Winter sun
The Dang Vu Ha Winter Sun passes through a cold atmosphere without dissolving it. Its low light cuts branches and surfaces with a precision that makes the season less gray than attentive.
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Dao Anh Khanh
Nude 1
Nude 1 by Dao Anh Khanh places the figure in a field of material and gestures that refuse the closed outline. The body exists in fragments, present enough to resist and open enough to share space with painting.
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Dau Quang Toan
Street III
Dau Quang Toan built Street III by facade plans, voids and passages rather than by descriptive perspective. This simplification maintains the rhythm of the neighborhood and allows color to play the role usually given to details.
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Dinh Dong
Summer color 10
Summer Color 10 accumulates greens, yellows and hot areas until the density of the air is felt. Dinh Dong paints less of a place than a season arriving at full power, when even the shadow appears warm.
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Giap Van Tuan
Autumn Street V
In Rue d'Automne V, Giap Van Tuan tightens the city around trees and facades won over by red tones. The series follows variations of the same motif like we find a street whose mood changes before its address.
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Ha Huy Hiep
Heavenly courier
The Heavenly Courier of Ha Huy Hiep combines the energy of the horse with mythical stories and popular signs. The animal does not cross an ordinary landscape: its course itself constructs the space that surrounds it.
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Hoang A Sang
Love
Hoang A Sang treats Love without a universal symbol ready to use, relying on proximity, looks and restraint of gestures. The relationship remains precise while leaving the viewer with the part of the story that the characters keep to themselves.
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The Ba Quan
Purple Burst II
Purple Burst II takes the wind as a deformation force, but tightens the masses more than the third painting in the series. The Ba Quan varies the pattern without copying its interior weather.
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Lam Duke Manh
Autumn sun on the street
Lam Duc Manh slides the autumn sun across the facades and the roadway, giving the street oblique clarity. The daily scene becomes a study of brief time where light suddenly brings colors together.
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Lam Xung
Burning flame VII
Burning Flame VII pushes the red forms towards an almost organic expansion. In Lam Xung, fire remains neither a focus nor an identifiable fire: it becomes a movement which consumes the distinction between background and subject.
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Mai Huy Dung
Portrait 16
Portrait 16 of May Huy Dung differs from the ninth portrait by a more closed construction and a different relationship between face and background. The series shows that painting a person is not just about changing the number on the door.
See the instructions →Historical landmarks
From Hanoi to an international scene
The Indochina School of Fine Arts structures modern education, but its artists quickly invent unique paths. The 1940s brought to light works where formal elegance rubbed shoulders with a more acute awareness of history. The Indochina War, the division of the country and then the American conflict brought artists and institutions into very different contexts in the North and the South.
After reunification, official cadres remained powerful, while the 1980s saw a growing need for personal expression. Dổi Moi accompanies the opening of workshops, galleries and international exchanges. In the in the following decades, Vietnamese painting refused uniformity: attentive realism, expressionism, abstraction, memorial landscape and symbolic figuration coexist.
The oil is rooted in an emerging Vietnamese modernity.
Painting accompanies revolution, displacement and resistance.
North and South develop distinct institutions and sensitivities.
Reconstruction, collective memory and realism dominate the landscape.
Privacy, city, abstraction and international circulation are multiplying.
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