By Hoai Van (From the booklet Nguyen Dinh Dung’s paintings)

Dinh Dung is a new phenomenon in the art circle.

At the exhibition about Hanoi in May 1988, some of his pictures were admired by the public and the Đoàn Kếtmagazine carried an article about him. I still have a good impression after contemplating his picture entitled “Stage”, first displayed here. Now, the Vietnam House sets asides for him a large room with 40 silk paintings. Here in Paris such big number of pictures by a single painter from Vietnam is something unsual and worthwhile! What is regrettable is that the space is not large enough for each picture for the viewers to see. This does not mean that the exhibition has not achieved expected results. The artistic quality and the vivid colors of these pictures have impressed the viewers a lot. Without going into detailed analysis, here we only point out some remarks on his crafts manship.

First of all, what does he intend to draw?

His salient inspiration, if we do not want to use the word “subject” at all, may stem from folk traditions, especially the stage costumes for festivals. Moreover, he is also very skillful at other things: ancient streets, lily, lotus flowers and female nudes, etc.

“Subject s nothing but a reason for the artist to express his own ideas in paintings” He once said. Essentially, the way of looking things and of expounding them with the painter’s brush, materials, colors, composition and rhythm, etc. So how are these ideas reflected in his paintings?

His colors are in the main hues commonly found in folk paintings: red, black, green, purple and yellow. Together with them are softer and lighter colors of egg-plant flowers, roses, etc. The contrast between dark and light patches of colors have created figures, space and sometimes the ambiance of these pictures. These techniques were frequently used in contemporary Western painting of P.Cezanne, F.Leger, Matisse, etc.

Flowers by the window, 60x80cm,2023

But he does not restrain himself in the brushwork and patches of colors. He is bold enough to make used of modelled technique so as to express figures, such as lily on the robe, nude, etc. One very new and important notion in the plastic arts is the rhythm which he has used in his pictures, such as lily, old pagoda, Group of Crabs, Herd of water buffalos, etc. His brushwork therefore that of rhythm, realistic and free, but not of cliché patterns after dimension.

What is certain is that Đình Dũng, like so many other Vietnamese artists, has had lots of chances to study the works of masters all over the world, although he has never gone abroad to do research, including Europe.

Anyhow, literature and arts are the common property of mankind, borrowed or heritated from some of other painters or a certain school or others for the sake of progress.

What is noticeable is that his pictures, modern in his way of expression but are very oriental. This can be easily found in the pictures whose subjects come from the oriental folkpaintings, such as “Lotus and dragon flies”, “Group of Crabs”, etc. Among those under this subject, there are some in series “Lotus 1,2,3,4” which have reached a high level of abstraction, similar to calligraphies or which have made us think of the school of abstractionism of Hans Hartung, Mark Tobey or Georges Mathieu, etc.

Each painter draws after his temperament, it is so commonly said. This can be applied to Dinh Dung’s case. This is shown through many works of his – from his pure figurative paintings like “Lily on the robe”, “Stage” and “Group of Crabs” to abstract works such as “Sea Coast”, “Lotus”. Etc. His brushwork is full of vitality as if it tries to record the beauty of things in their natural movement.

Dinh Dung’s paintings are in general bright and rich in poetical images. They reveal an optimistic and poetical viewpoint. He does not portray reality in a concrete way but he describes concrete things of a culture: “Stage”, “Parasol Procession”, “Mid-Autumn Festival”, “Hanoi ancient streets”, “Old pagoda”, “Lily on the Robe”, etc. Sometimes, he draws things that are considered as eternal – the beauty of a naked girl or the glamour of nature (“Lotus” and “Group of crabs”, etc.). When he paints stage personages or women in Ao Dai (Robes), he does not aim at portraying real persons under their clothes. When he carries out the painting entitled “Old pagoda”, it does not imply any single pagoda at all, on the contrary, he records the rhythm expressing the characteristics of an old pagoda. In a word, Dinh Dung does not portray things merely with his own eyes but with his imagination and his realism of conception instead. It can be said that his paintings both inherit the tradition of classical Oriental folk-paintings and stem from modern theories of the Western paintings.