For many art lovers, the name Pham Thuc Chuong hasn’t been deep in mind like Le Pho, Mai Trung Thu, Le Thi Luu, Vu Cao Dam – the four of great Vietnamese artists who studied at Indochina Fine Arts College (1925-1945) had lived abroad.
Portrait of painter Pham Thuc Chuong (1918-1971)
Perhaps someone even be a bit surprised when hear “Pham Thuc Chuong”. But on international auctions, works in silk of Pham Thuc Chuong has got amazingly high prices. Most recent, at Sotheby’s Hongkong December 2021, the work in silk “Two young girls”, dimension 27×22 cm, reached the price 600 million vnd (excluding VAT).
Compared to painter Le Pho (1907-2001), Mai Trung Thu (1906-1980) graduated from the 1st class of Indochina Fine Arts College (1925-1930), Vu Cao Dam (1908-2000) graduated from the 2nd class. (1926-1931), Le Thi Luu (1911-1988) graduated from the 3rd class (1927-1932). These four painters all came to live and settled in France before 1938. Then painter Pham Thuc Chuong was born in 1918, compared with the quartet “Phổ, Thứ, Lựu, Đàm”, he was also the equivalent of the same period.
Pham Thuc Chuong studied in 9th course (1933-38) at Indochina Fine Arts College with artists Hoang Lap Ngon, Nguyen Dzung, Trinh Huu Ngoc, Nguyen Duc Nung…
According to the document, among the 9th students, perhaps only Pham Thuc Chuong settled abroad. Artists who had been students of 9th course are famous, created many important works for Vietnam Modern Art.
Pham Thuc Chuong became famous quite early. In 1935, he won the Grand Prize of Fine Arts College of Indochina. In 1939, Pham Thuc Chuong sent some lacquer wood carved works to San Francisco International Exhibition (USA). He started teaching about drawing and painting in 1940 and officially lived in France in 1946 In France, he worked as a theater decorator and illustrator.
After spending time in France, he moved to Chavannes-le-Chêne, near Yvonand, Switzerland with his young wife, they lived in a little house in the middle of a farm, where he advance and inovate himself in mind and assemble groups to study, teaching about mystical macrobiotic. Because he was also a sage, always longing to be “the communicator of Eastern Dogma”.
Pham Thuc Chuong (1918-1971). Children writing lesson. 1950. Silk. 18 × 44.5 cm
The work in silk “Children writing lesson” which Viet Art View introducing to you is one of his typical works combining Western visual art language and Eastern style.
This work had been printed in the Catalogue of Pham Thuc Chuong’s exhibiton at André Weil gallery in Matignon, Paris 1965.
With the width is double the vertical 18×44,5 cm, the work is similar to a frame for a quartet poetry or a Chinese ancient style landscapes. He turned across the length of the silk, put on an image of a boy and a girl. They lying on the floor. The boy is writing and the girl is looking. Beside them, the lovely cat is sleeping, an absolutely peaceful scene.
Theme, composition like this we usually see in works of Mai Trung Thu about children.
Pham Thuc Chuong’s contours are not soft, rounded in the beautiful aesthetic form like Mai Trung Thu’s. He created seemingly abstract lines, crooked outlines, geometric shapes with splashes of color that follow the deliberate strokes of pen force. This is the way of launching the pen, creating boldness like the watercolor painting technique in ancient Chinese sumi-e paintings and in a modern Western visual art language, evoking shapes from strokes and shapes. Each shape is not a separate patch of colors, bordered by black strokes, they are free, freely scattered out.
Every composition of Pham Thuc Chuong seems to follow a moment in life that we come through by that gentleness, pureness, it quietly arrives from a power which sometimes we can’t understand.
His works travel through two periods: the period of maturity created on an intuitive level and a period of sensuality in expression, shorter but with a lot more to offer than the first.
Both a painter and an philosopher of the East, Pham Thuc Chuong is considered by Western scholars as a great thinker. The similarity of the color patches in Pham Thuc Chuong’s works is close to the style of the silk painting “Hiếu học” (Fond of learning) by Tu Duyen (1917-2021), Tu Duyen took advantage of the nature of silk that splash color to create dark and light for the character The outline become not too important, just used to highlight the necessary places to create steadiness for the image.
Basically, modern viewers often look to the fusion of tradition and modernity as a continuation of the past to the future. Pham Thuc Chuong is a Vietnamese, deep in his mind, Vietnam homeland and Vietnamese people were always cherished; then represented in his works. A painting has resonance and many disruptive rhythms such as “Children writing lesson” by Pham Thuc Chuong invites different interests and feelings.
Pham Thuc Chuong (1918-1971). Children writing lesson. 1950. Silk. 18 × 44.5 cm
That is the identity, the visual art language, and the style of an artist with traditional Asian ideology combined with Western modern painting. Let’s look forward to the beautiful works that will appear in the treasure of works left behind by Pham Thuc Chuong for modern Vietnamese fine arts.
Written by Viet Art View
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