Like a coincidence, I accepted to write this article near the Lunar New Year. The season comes in the middle of a cold and gloomy winter day, Hanoi people are about to welcome a warm New year spring. Outside, it’s starting to be warm. Such a happiness to see the painting ‘New year flower market’, the theme of spring made by Lương Xuân Nhị from the age of youth.
Lương Xuân Nhị (1914-2006). New Year flower market. The 70s-80s. Gouache. 53×110 cm.
Graduated from Indochina Fine Arts College, class XIII (1932-1937) with the highest score, in the following years he always received the outstanding silver and gold award for painting. He came to art very simply because his family had a gouache shop, so he learned to paint at the age of 16, just like the family of painter Trần Văn Cẩn had a profession of making toy figurine, the family of painter Nguyễn Gia Trí had the profession of embroidering clothes and banners.
Portrait of painter Lương Xuân Nhị (1914-2006)
He was a talented artist, meticulous in composing with a palette of green rice colour mixed with a little bit of yellow and gentle color scheme. Color is the language of each artist who defined it. He thought so. Therefore, today, viewers can easily recognize his paintings throughout his career: From Summer (silk 1943), Going to New year Market (silk 1938), Fishing family (silk 1937) to oil paintings: The edge of the well (oil painting 1960), The field of cassava (1960), Boat on the Hương River (1980)… attractive green rice colour makes a talented, noble and exemplary Lương Xuân Nhị. Like Tô Ngọc Vân, he is a painter of women. Lương Xuân Nhị’s paintings of young women are gentle, lithe, not brilliant, full of emotions but tender and decent, standing and sitting with deliberateness. He painted the example that is oval face, slim and gentle, the face of a young woman easily causes emotions for Vietnamese modern artists.
Lương Xuân Nhị (1914-2006). New Year flower market. The 70s-80s. Gouache. 53×110 cm.
Lương Xuân Nhị always kept in mind: Not only in painting but most other art branches, national characteristic is the artist’s actual feelings in front of society and the things around him. “How I feel, I express like that, because I am Vietnamese with Vietnamese blood, so the more sincere the emotion, the closer the work is to the national identity”.
In ‘New year flower market’, Lương Xuân Nhị represented exactly the familiar images of the old time until now. Peach blossoms are cared by people in the countryside, blooming for springtime. Hanoi girls wearing áo dài, hidden then appear in flower market. Green and yellow on the palette for girls’ outfits are temporarily removed by the artist, springday, girls wear vibrant floral outfits of blue and green, yellow, orange, pink. The peach blossom color scheme makes the space cheerfully move from the graceful lines of girls. The girl looked down at the blossoms, there was a group of three girls, huddled before the branch of peach blossoms, held in the hand of countryside people.
No girl holding a branch for a careful choice, Lương Xuân Nhị wanted the girls to be like jewels for the new year flower market of Thăng Long land.
Lương Xuân Nhị (1914-2006). New Year flower market. The 70s-80s. Gouache. 53×110 cm.
Appreciate every stroke of the composition on his paintings, Lương Xuân Nhị’s style brought the voice from the artist’s romantic soul but still here and there the creative meaning of an intellectual, aristocratic dignity.
Looking at the painting of New year market in springtime, every family finds themselves the memory of a peaceful and quiet Hanoi of the New Year’s Eve, of the warm spring days with the brilliant peach blossoms welcoming the sun.
Written by art researcher Nguyễn Hải Yến
Copyrights belong to Viet Art View
