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The painting titled La famille dans le jardin (Family in the garden) by Vietnamese painter Le Pho |
The masterpiece, created in 1938, is 91.3 x 61.5-centimeter ink and gouache work on silk with Pho's signature at the lower right corner of the painting.
Additionally, the ink and gouache on silk painting titled Jeune Fille en Bleu (Young Lady in Blue) by painter Vu Cao Dam was sold for a hammer price of US$900,000 and an artwork, ink and gouache on silk themed Femmes et enfants au bord de la rivière (Women and Children by the riverfront) by Mai Trung Thu fetched over US$700,000.
In 2021, an oil painting entitled Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong (Portrait of Mademoiselle Phuong) by painter Mai Trung Thu achieved a record price of US$3.1 million for a Vietnamese artwork at the Modern Art Evening and Day Sales of Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 18.
In 2019, an oil-on-canvas painting titled “Nude” by master painter Le Pho was sold at US$ 1.4 million at an auction sale at Christie’s Hong Kong on May 26.
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The ink and gouache on silk painting titled Jeune Fille en Bleu (Young Lady in Blue) by painter Vu Cao Dam |
Le Pho (1907-2001) was a French-Vietnamese painter best known for his stylized depictions of nudes, gardens, and floral still life. His work succeeded in merging Impressionism, Surrealism, and traditional Chinese painting into a sensual yet disconcerting vision of Eden, reminiscent of both Odilon Redon and Pierre Bonnard.
He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Hanoi before attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris on a scholarship in 1932. His works have been displayed in the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Oklahoma Arts Center and others.
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The artwork, ink and gouache on silk themed Femmes et enfants au bord de la rivière (Women and Children by the riverfront) by Mai Trung Thu |
Mai Trung Thu (1906-1980) was born in Hai Phong. In 1925, he studied in the Indochina Fine Arts College, together with popular painters namely Nguyen Phan Chanh, Le Van De, Le Pho, Nguyen Cao Luyen.
In 1930, after graduating from the Indochina Fine Arts College, he was appointed as a painting teacher at Hue High School for the Gifted. In the 1930s, Mai Trung Thu attended exhibitions in many countries around the world such as Italy, Belgium, the US and France where he settled later in Paris in 1936.
The artist was interested in oil paintings that depicted scenes of Vietnamese rural life and chose silk as the material to execute valuable paintings. His favorite theme was women, children and daily life combined with Vietnam’s cultural identity.
His artworks featured light colors displayed in many exhibitions all over the world significantly contributed to building the reputation for Vietnamese Contemporary Fine Arts.
Vu Cao Dam (1908-2000) was born in Hanoi. He was one of the alumni of Victor Tardieu's École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi in the 1930s, along with Mai Trung Thu and Le Pho. He received a scholarship that sent him to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole du Louvre.
He was a painter and sculptor whose mixture of traditional Vietnamese painting and Western painting techniques mostly centered on landscapes and figure painting. He lived most of his life in Paris. His work features prominently in the collections of the Musee de Algiers, The Musee de la France d’Outre Mer, and the Musee d’Art of Paris.
