.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Nguyen Gia Tri's main contribution to modern Vietnamese art was his original idea of handling traditional craft materials and his success in elevating the status of lacquer painting to that of fine art. Having graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine in 1936, his style is a combination of Western technique with Oriental aestheticism. The artist's main concern was to search for a nationalistic culture outside of the French school. The artist did not restrict himself exclusively to the medium of oil on canvas and in 1936 he painted oil on silk for his graduation piece. He then produced lacquer work, which would make him an internationally known artist. Equally skilled in both oil and lacquer painting, his favorite subject is the rustic Vietnamese landscape.
This present lot was executed around 1941, a time when Nguyen Gia Tri was taken by the French government to a remote area where the minorities or 'Muong' people lived. He stayed there under house arrest during the anti-French movement with ample time to take in his surroundings. The landscape in this painting probably depicts the scenery where he was held with the typical Vietnamese straw huts in the foreground, the graduated farming land on the left and plenty of wild vegetation growing all around. Typical of Tri's lacquer works, he depicts golden bamboo trees with reddish leaves and green banana trees with the use of green, blue and white eggshells to further define his subjects. The overall effect of the painting is rich and undulating, gold shimmers throughout, bringing rhythm and harmony to the painting. With this traditional and painstaking technique, Gia's lacquer work is certainly Vietnamese landscape and culture at its best.
This present lot was executed around 1941, a time when Nguyen Gia Tri was taken by the French government to a remote area where the minorities or 'Muong' people lived. He stayed there under house arrest during the anti-French movement with ample time to take in his surroundings. The landscape in this painting probably depicts the scenery where he was held with the typical Vietnamese straw huts in the foreground, the graduated farming land on the left and plenty of wild vegetation growing all around. Typical of Tri's lacquer works, he depicts golden bamboo trees with reddish leaves and green banana trees with the use of green, blue and white eggshells to further define his subjects. The overall effect of the painting is rich and undulating, gold shimmers throughout, bringing rhythm and harmony to the painting. With this traditional and painstaking technique, Gia's lacquer work is certainly Vietnamese landscape and culture at its best.