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NGUYEN TU NGHIEM
(1922)
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Nguyen Tu Nghiem is considered
the pioneer artist in combining folkloric tradition with the modem spirit,
creating a uniquely Vietnamese style.
Even when he was still a
student, his teachers and peers used to admire him for his creativity,
especially in his lively oil paintings on rural themes such as Grazing the
Buffaloes in the Rain, The Cow at the Gate of the Pagoda and The Guardian of the
Temple of literature.
Together with painter Nguyen Do
Cung, he visited many temples and pagodas familiarizing himself with each statue
and carving. These trips provided him with the material and inspiration for the
development of his artistic language.
Nguyen Tu Nghiem was never
satisfied with himself, trying to exhaust every single theme he embarked on with
as many paintings as he could. Accordingly, he would pursue the same theme for
many years. On the theme of ancient dancing, it took him twenty-seven years of
pondering between An Ancient Dance (1956) and An Ancient Dance (1983). Moreover
he managed to take Vietnamese modem painting back to the roots of the national
identity with a series of folkloric pictures including The Mid- Autumn Festival
(I 963), The Lion Dance (1962) and Genie Giong (1976). In no other painters can
the blend of traditional culture and modernity be better felt than in Nguyen Tu
Nghiem,
Born in 1922 in Nam Dan
District, Nghe An Province.
Graduate a the 1941-1946 class
of the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine.
Awarded the Ho Chi Minh Prize
for Literature and Arts in 1996
Main works.- The Guardian of
the Temple of Literature (oil, 1944), New Year's Eve on the Bank of Restored
Sword Lake (lacquer 1957), An Ancient Dance (gouache, 1983), and Genie Giong
(lacquer 1976).
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