Nguyen Trung, « Les Élégantes », 2000, or grace, a subtle ploy against dogmatism

In the 1930s, two groups of Vietnamese emerged from Hanoi’s École des Beaux-Arts: those who left to conquer the West, i.e. France and Paris, and those who stayed “at home”. Le Pho, Vu Cao Dam, Mai Thu and a few others took the first approach, Nguyen Phanh Chan and Nguyen Gia Tri, and many others, the second.

Irrefutable and generous, these two paths overshadowed, unwillingly, another later trend: the “School of the South”, with its unmistakable characteristics. Nguyen Trung, born in 1940 in Soc Trang in the Mekong Delta, stands out as an exemplary representative.

He graduated in 1962 from the Gia Dinh School, founded in and after the country’s partition in 1954, which included former members of Hanoi’s École des Beaux-Arts as teachers.

Of course, we need to differentiate politically between the period before and after 1975, and remember that after the country’s reunification, “socialist realism” was imposed in the South, like a mantra: art, as in the North, had to get closer to the people, bear witness to their daily realities, highlight their courage during the war and praise all the achievements of reconstruction.

The artist must be the servant of the socialist cause. The themes are men and women, heroes, soldiers, peasants and “workers”.

In 2000, Nguyen Trung offers us these women who toy – a little – with us, in their multicolored ao dai, rosy cheeks, loose hair, bare feet, sheltered from the sun – which could spoil their diaphanous complexion – by Champa trees (frangipani) whose fallen blossoms dot the scene.

Three individualities… Free…

Contemporary Vietnam remains a country where allusion takes on its full meaning. Nguyen Trung’s masterpiece in lacquer – an art whose technical requirements are obviously far more demanding than those of oil on canvas, where he is much more prolific – subtly expresses his philosophy as an artist.

Jean-François Hubert