A painter’s journey

Van Duong Thanh’s life has been surrounded by art and artists, with admirers coming from the four points of the globe.

A painting by Van Duong Thanh.

Though one of Asia’s most accomplished and talentedinternational female artists, Van Duong Thanh has lived and worked inSweden for more than 20 years. Yet as we sat together next to a bigwindow overlooking a busy street at a charming, newly-opened art galleryin Hanoi, she kept talking about how the treasure of Vietnamesefolklore has filled her paintings, her career, and her identity.

‘I drew heavily on the experience of living in the countryside in myearly years, the art of woodcarving on the wall at village temples andthe richness of legends, folk tales and folk songs,’ she recalled.

Nostalgia for home often brought her back to Hanoi, a place that hasremained anchored in her mind. This time, though, she was back to stagean exhibition, ‘Van Duong Thanh with a Touch of Summer’, at V-Art Room,75 Tran Hung Dao, where for the first time she displayed her collectionof eleven portraits by late painters Nguyen Tu Nghiem (1922) and BuiXuan Phai (1920-1988).

Slowly sipping on green tea infused with lotus collected from WestLake, Thanh described her artistic journey with a charming smile.

Born in the coastal town of Tuy Hoa in Phu Yen province, Van DuongThanh later moved to Hanoi when she was only four.

Her father, a civilservant, was inordinately proud of his daughter’s painting skill andalways encouraged her to follow her dream to become an artist. LaterThanh enrolled and studied for 12 years at the l’Ecole de Beaux Arts,Indochine, where she was trained within the traditional thematicprinciples encompassing traditional arts under the guidance of Tran LuuHau, Diep Minh Chau, and other renowned artists.

She probably first came to the attention of the local art communityin 1974, when her ‘White Chrysanthemum’ painting was bought by theVietnam Fine Arts Museum for 300 Vietnam dong; an enormous amount whencompared with the average salary of, say, an engineer at that time.

Shebecame friends with Bui Xuan Phai and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, who had alreadyestablished their reputations as the most prolific modern painters inVietnam and secured a range of works by these masters, summoned up into aunique collection that was treasured many years later on.

Asked to name those who had a strong impact on her artistic career,Thanh mentions notable French impressionists along with prominentVietnamese artists.

However, she fondly remembers the respected Bui XuanPhai. In fact, even before meeting him Thanh had admired his art sinceshe was much younger, often saving clippings of his illustrations andsketches from Van Nghe magazine.

She became his student, his soul mateand they developed between them a bond and friendship built on theirshared love of art. Many of Bui Xuan Phai’s works that originated duringhis 20-year encounter with Van Duong Thanh are portraits of her.

Thanh estimated there were more than 1,000 portraits drawn by themaster and she still has 300 in her private collection.

These are mostlyworks on paper – drawings and paintings on a variety of paper media,even newspaper and pages torn out of books in which Phai has capturedhis model’s personality with exquisite precision.

Shireen Naziree, aMalaysian art critic, in the catalogue ‘Art Works by Bui Xuan Phai fromthe Collection of Van Duong Thanh’, highlighted these intimaterepresentations of the female form by the late painter:

‘Often theyencompassed simple gestures and forms and despite their visual economy,they were always appropriated with a generosity that combined an acutesense of respect and sincerity.’

Van Duong Thanh also painted andsketched Phai, in which she especially echoed his fragile manner andgentle inner eye.

In July Thanh proudly presented to Hanoi audiencesseven paintings by Phai, most of which are portraits of her. An oil oncanvas painting entitled Diu Dang (Gentle), dated by the master in 1974,and another oil on canvas called Van Duong Thanh Ao Do (Van Duong Thanhin Red), completed in 1975, are the two most acclaimed.

Van Duong Thanh’s body of work reveals the European influences ofimpressionism, expressionism, and abstract combined harmoniously with anAsian style and Vietnamese folkloric tradition.

Mining her own memoriesand experience, she poured on toile romantic images of the country’slandscape and people.

Many of her exhibitions feature a series about Hanoi, the constanttheme that flows through the long periods she lives away from home.

Onecan often recognise in her lacquer and oil on canvas the contours ofQuan Chuong Gate, narrow alleys, mossy roofs, dancing flowers, and thecasual yet charming serenity of the Old Quarter. Everything is filledwith depth and detail and an abundance of life.

As a female artist, Van Duong Thanh is also keen on observing therituals and concerns of women around her.

The work ‘Women and Nature’shows a mother resting on bright grass under a blue sky with rows oftrees fading into distance. The painting was previously displayed at theFine Arts Museum in Sweden in 2000 and later acquired by Australiancollector John Rosten.

Nora Taylor, in a rare art book on female artists in Hanoi, called‘Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art’, wrote that VanDuong Thanh’s work ‘appeals to a conventional view of Vietnam and itsbeautiful scenery and exotic landscape, and will continue finding ademand.’

Throughout the years, Van Duong Thanh has achieved an incrediblecareer. She has drawn more than 1,500 paintings and held some 65exhibitions around the world.

Her works have travelled to severalinternational museums, including the national art museums of Singapore,Poland, Thailand and Sweden.

She seems to be devoted to art more thanever. Her studio in Hanoi, the White Lotus villa on the edge of WestLake, has been turned into an atelier that she expects will be a spacefor people regardless of their background to come, learn and developtheir love for art, just as she was nurtured by her beloved father andoutstanding teachers in the good old days.

The Guide

A painter’s journey

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