The Phases Of Vietnamese Art

1925-1945 The Establishment of the Fine Art College of Indochina.
1995 marks the 70th year of existence of Vietnamese painting. From 1925 to 1945, the first epoch of the history of Vietnamese painting coincides with the history of the Fine Arts College of Indochina (FACI) because it was that college which created conditions for the birth and development, vigorous until now, of Vietnamese painting... The principal promoter of the programme concerning the fine arts was Victor Tardieu (1870-1937) and Josheph Inguimberty (1896-1971).
Victor Tardieu was a painter having profound knowledge of Oriental art. His oil paintings were extremely simple in form and quite tasteful in colors, their presentation reflected spaciousness, laying emphasis on the general composition. While Le Pho, Mai Trung Thu, Vu Cao Dam, Le Thi Luu... were influenced by Tardieu and always kept good memory of the first solid steps laid by the later to allow them to advance still further. To Ngoc Van, Nguyen Gia Tri, Tran Van Can, Luu Van Sin were inclined to Inguimberty's side. From the beginning, To Ngoc Van was among the openairists with his canvas Offerings realized in the impressionist way. Tran Van Can is to be mentioned with his canvas Little Thuy in the style of the portraits by Vermeer de Delft, a Dutch painter, pure but solid, carefully done and refined... These were works realized in the open air or in front of models in natural light and colours...
Before 1925 all Vietnamese painters had no clear conception of painting. They joined the FACI with the sincere confidence and the deep and burning aspiration to rapidly attain the Beautiful of which they had only a vague but so captivating imagination. Within 20 years (1925-1945) Vietnamese painters had engaged in the search for a model in ancient or modern times, in the West or the East. They approached the Schools of European painting at the beginning of the 20th century: fauvism, cubism, symbolism, expressionnism, surrealism, futurism, abstractionnism. And only those who could assimilate European painting and had moral and material conditions were capable of ensuring the continuous development of national art. To Ngoc Van, Nguyen Gia Tri, Tran Van Can, Nguyen Tuong Lan, Nguyen Tien Chung, Luu Van Sin... and later Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Nguyen Sang, Bui Xuan Phai, Nguyen Sy Ngoc, ect, belong to this class of painters...
1945-1954 Painters volunteer to fight for national salvation
1945 The Revolution had awaken the national sense and at the same time political consciousness among the Vietnamese artists. A movement among the artists to support the Viet Minh gained ground in Hanoi with uncommon speed.
The national exhibition solemnly organized at the Municipal Theater of Hanoi in August 1946 gathered the works of various genres by the patriotic artists of Vietnam: oil painting, pumice lacquer, gouache, water color, wood cutting, most of them treating subjects relating to the struggle of Vietnam for a new life. In 1948, after three years of war, the second national exhibition of fine arts was organized in a forest of palm trees (Xuan Ang village, Phu Tho province) with about 100 pictures, including silks, wood engravings, propaganda drawings. The Third Exhibition was organized in Chiem Hoa, on the occasion of the anniversary of the day of national resistance.
At the moment of victory, returning to the capital there were only about thirty or forty painters from all parts of the country. The Fine Arts College of Vietnam urgently founded as early as 1955 to train new painters, was placed under the direction of Tran Van Can. In the meantime, in the South, on Dec.31,1954, painter Le Van De set up the National Fine Arts College of Saigon, with collaborators the majority of whom having graduated from the Fine Arts College of Indochina: Nguyen Van Long, U Van An, Nguyen Van Anh, Nguyen Van Que...and painters returning from France, like Duong Van Den, Bui Van Kinh. During its twenty years of existence, the National Fine Arts College of Saigon had produced renowned painters: Nguyen Trung, Nguyen Phuoc, Do Quang Em, Ho Huu Thu, Co Tan Long Chau, Nguyen Thi Tam, Nguyen Trung Tin, Nguyen Tan Cuong... After 1975, the National Fine Arts College of Saigon merged with the National Decorative Arts School of Gia Dinh to become the Fine Arts College of Ho Chi Minh City, now the Fine Arts University of Ho Chi Minh City.
Embracing new themes centred on man in work, production and combat as well as consulting the art works created for labouring people by French artists as Fougeron, Amblard and Taslitzky or by Italian atitsts as Pizzinato, Trecani and Guttuso, the young Vietnamese painters have finally identified themselves to create a very fruitful progressive realism.

Lacquer Painting

The principal material for pumice lacquer painting is Vietnamese lacquer, used to lacquer cultural objects and current usage articles. After his arrival in Hanoi, one day Inguimberty accompanied Nam Son in a visit to the Temple of Literature. He was amazed at a layer of lacquer covering the ancient cultural objects, the parallel sentences and the columns of the sanctuary. Time - several centuries - had changed this layer of lacquer into an extraordinarily beautiful color scales.
Inguimberty was gained over by the "Annamite lacquer" and later on engaged in trying lacquer in painting. Inguimberty had made a great service to the development of Vietnam lacquer painting. He was of the view that only the Vietnamese were capable of making lacquer painting, just like oil painting was the privilege of Europeans.However this malicious resin has rather extravagant characteristics. To have it dry, it must be kept in heat. The cold and dry weather prevents it from being ever dry. To paint with lacquer, one must paint in depth what is in the external layer of the picture and paint above what is in the internal layer, then rub it with pumice and the picture will be visible. The strokes must be minute because there is a great deal of sticky matter and a high degree of homogeneity must be achieved in the lacquer, because everything might disappear during the pumicing. The creation is done in several stages, after each of them, the lacquer dries and only then can one start the following stage. A small mistake can be disastrous. Thousands of other difficulties are to be overcome, the working rules must be strictly observed. Only a true artisan in the lacquering art who has inherited the secrets transmitted from generation to generation can resolve these problems. The palette of lacquer painting includes only the color of canhgian (cockroach wings), then (black), son (red), silver and gold. Gold and silver must be pure gold and silver, which in the present are difficult to obtain. To prepare the color, mother-of-pearl and egg shell are also used. Other materials are sometimes not so effective. If all the complex stages are got over, sometimes still kept secret, we shall certainly obtain a marvellous world of material, color and light, a magnificent world unknown up to now.In 1958, a delegation of Vietnamese painters brought their lacquer works to the International Exhibition of Fine Arts held in Moscow by the socialist countries. Their works were highly appreciated when the contents of the works reflected the multiple aspects of daily life in a manner characterized by perspicacity and romanticism. Form 1957 onwards, pumice lacquer was more and more recognized as the principal language of the Vietnamese painting. Almost all painters wanted to achieve the most important work of their life by means of this material. Tran Van Can has enthusiastically composed some most successful lacquer paintings in all his artist life.In the race to valorize this traditional material, Nguyen Gia Tri was the first to attain the aim. On the surfaces of the paintings, colours and material constitute layers that intermingle to form a bloc of amber perfectly limpid and Nguyen Gia Tri added strokes to set out his personages in the background, young girls standing or sitting, going to and fro, pursuing a butterfly or picking flowers, playing under the leaves of a weeping willow floating in the wind, or walking on the bank of a lake where white lotuses are blooming. All were arranged in a harmonious rhythm with arabesques to make viewers feel the contrast between extreme richness and maximal modesty. Very few persons can equal Nguyen Gia Tri in lacquer painting. A painter who has made profound studies of pumice lacquer said: "Pumice lacquer can be compared to a religious man who observes strict control of himself, respecting the rigorous rules of his original religion."

Source: From "Vietnam Contemporary Art", 1996
               By The Hanoi Fine Arts Publisher