Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Hong Kong

陳留厚
花
亞克力紙本
2003年作

簽名：hau 03（左下）

來源
香港私人收藏

Over the course of a career that spanned almost six decades, Tran Luu Hau established himself as one of the most beloved and renowned artists in Vietnam. Born in 1928, he participated in the Resistance Class (Khao Khang Chien) founded by the Vietnamese pioneer artist To Ngoc Van (1906 – 1954) during the First Indochina War. Between 1955 and 1962, Tran Luu Hau studied art and theatre design at the Surikov Fine Arts Institute of Moscow, where he had the opportunity to explore significant works of European art.

Upon returning to Vietnam, he served as a faculty member at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts and was respected by students for his strong support of their artistic efforts. He used the term "abstraction of reality" to describe his distinctive artistic style influenced by the works of post-impressionist and abstract expressionist artists like Henri Matisse, Chaim Soutine and Willem de Kooning. A prolific artist, Tran Luu Hau expressed intense feelings and emotions in his art characterised by heightened colours, bold lines, and dynamic brushstrokes. His favourite subjects include nudes, self-portraits, flowers, as well as the places he had lived and visited like Hanoi, Sapa, Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay.

Tran Luu Hau's works have been exhibited internationally and held in prestigious institutions such as the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, the Asian Art Museum of Russia, Chase Manhattan Bank, Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank and Singapore's Singtel Art Collection, among many others.